Therapy
by Greenaleydis
Summary: I bet you thought when you first sat on that couch that I just sit here all day and ask you how you feel. That's not therapy. Therapy is going deep in your heart and healing, because the deeper you go into the cave, the more darkness you find.
1. Chicken

**Chapter One: Chicken**

Draco Malfoy looked at the small building in front of him. The day was beautiful - the sky was a milky blue with no clouds, and the sun shone down with great intensity, warming the hearts of everyone it graced. A light wind blew through the buildings and rustled the skirts of school girls on their first days away from school; squirrels darted up trees, chasing each other. The general bustle of activity could be heard further down the street, where shoppers and store owners went about their daily business.

_What a shithole_.

Being sprung from Azkaban nearly twenty years early by his nemesis, Harry Potter, did nothing to help his mood. And Potter's "alternative method of rehabilitation" meant this - seeing a shrink. House arrest. Frozen bank accounts. Confiscation papers signed and dated to the Ministry... for his _entire bloody mansion_. _His_ mansion. "They just want to have a look around; you'll get it back once your term is up." Potter just had to be this little noble and self righteous prat. And of course, the low blow was that he didn't have a wand, and wouldn't be allowed to get one until all of the other shit was over and done with.

_Throw me back in the fucking cell._

He knew that he was being an unappreciative little prick. But honestly, he was full of gratitude until he found out who his counselor was going to be.

Her. Bookworm extraordinaire. He could just see her little nostrils flaring already. Unbelievable.

That made everything turn to crap. Not having a wand was already torture, but add a year of house arrest that felt like ten now. Bail money - a generous amount - that felt like robbery. And this... this shrink thing... was a monster in itself.

He stepped up the concrete steps and entered a modernly furnished white room with comfy, worn blue couches along a wall and a counter on the opposite wall. There was a single painting of a waterfall on the far wall, creating water noises in the room for relaxation. Draco wanted to throw up already, and he wasn't even in the chair yet.

"Can I help you, Sir?" asked the secretary at the counter, a girl of about sixteen. If he wasn't in such a bad mood, he would have softened up his features and noticed how pretty she was.

_No, you can't help me, _he thought. "I'm Draco Malfoy - I have an appointment at ten."

She looked at her desk calendar, unable to hide her emotions. She'd definitely heard all about him. "Yes, you're the big one. She's waiting for you in her office - straight down the hall, third door on the left."

The building was a little bigger than it looked on the outside, but not by much. He guessed that only a dozen people worked here.

"Come in," Hermione said as he stepped in front of the doorway. She'd left the door open.

Ew. He hated her all over again. Hermione was sitting at her desk with a fresh notebook, manila folder, and self-inking quill, quite obviously creating a folder for him and shoving his background information into it. He was surprised that she didn't have a desktop computer next to her - even most of the wizarding world offices had them now-a-days. "Sit," she commanded, obviously trying to sound gentle.

His temper flared. _What am I, a dog?_ He remained standing, waiting for her to notice.

If she did, she either didn't care or didn't feel like saying anything. She just kept on writing, working her way through documents, her quill scratching on the bleached company parchment.

Then, something occurred to him. "God, Granger, what are you _doing_ here?"

She stopped and looked up. She knew exactly what he meant - she'd asked herself the same thing many times.

Having not graduated from school, even though she'd had a reputation at school for being a stellar student and quick learner, she'd still found it hard to get started with her life. Her hand in the Dark Lord's defeat had definitely gotten her the news coverage and the respect... but not the job she wanted.

Somewhere along the way, during her nights in the forest with Harry, she had decided what she wanted to do most - help people. In any way possible. Public service, as she knew, was the most noble profession to get rewarded so little. So becoming a part of the people who worked constantly and got little recognition felt incredibly good, despite the pay grade. In her own mind, she knew that she was working for the greater good. She became a counselor, a therapist, in order to help people get over the dark times of the Dark Lord and his followers, and especially the months following Lord Voldemort's death; with Death Eaters wrecking havoc still, struggling for a new leader and balance of power, and being caught left and right, people who didn't even know they were Death Eaters were thrown in Azkaban, and families were torn apart by deaths, vandalism, and hatred.

Her profession was the most important part in restoring the order. Because when a person's mind is not in its right place, nothing constructive could be done.

That is why she stayed. The long nights, the endless new arrivals, people she'd heard about, people she'd known, people she'd been disgusted with for their war crimes... and she had to keep a straight face. How did she manage it? A couple of anxiety pills and a _lot_ of coffee. Not to mention her own ability, nourished with time, to keep her own emotions in check while doing something. Ignore the bad manners and the insults and just get them to talk. _That's right,_ she would think as a patient would yell at her, _get it all out. Release your anger. Soon there will be nothing left to fill that hole, and that's where I come in._

"So, let's begin with something simple." She was trying to divert his attention, and he knew it. And he knew that she knew he knew it.

"Harry Potter pleaded with the Wizenagamot that due to your family and the way you were brought up, you had no real control over anything in your life. He also said that you have a conscience and that you are a victim of brainwashing and the fear of constant torture if there was any noncompliance with Voldemort's demands." She looked at him squarely now. "Is this true, or is Harry giving you the benefit of the doubt?"

Draco snorted. He hated the way she spoke Potter's name, as if she wasn't best friends with him. He hated the way "Harry Potter," just his name, could just sum up every part of his legacy. "How am I supposed to answer that? You've already made up your mind."

"This isn't about _me_. It's about you. Well?"

He sat on her worn, blue couch and leaned forward. He stared at her, watching the emotions flow under her carefully placed features. _On the contrary, it is all about you. Without you, there is no relief. Without you, I can't get the fuck out of here. _How he loathed that face.

"You're such a fucking robot."

Hermione sighed and clenched her fists. _Ten, nine, eight, seven, six..._

"What are you doing, spacing out? Some kind of therapist you are..."

_Five, four, three..._

"Hello? Anyone home?"

_Two... one..._

"Really now. It's no wonder you're stuck in this place."

Hermione sighed again. "Shut up, Malfoy. And get out of my office. Same time tomorrow."

Draco Malfoy stared at her for another few seconds before getting up and walking out. But not before he heard her last, muttered breath:

"Chicken."


	2. Open Mind

**Chapter Two: Open Mind**

Draco flopped down on his newly purchased bed and looked around the room. His flat was so small; he could get claustrophobia in here. It was nothing like the high ceilings and openness of the Manor.

But then again, nothing really was. The Manor was probably one of the finest buildings in the world.

He had an interview at the Ministry in twenty minutes, in the Department of Mysteries. _Department of Mysteries?_ he'd read from the newspaper. _Should I apply there? That definitely sounds like an uncertain future for my "career."_ He'd chuckled at his little joke.

_I've been seeing Granger for a fortnight and I still don't feel any better. I just get more and more angry with her every time I walk in her tidy little office._ He'd done a few things though. He'd ranted about his father, and instead of listening, she wrote it all down. He needed her to _listen_, not file away his rant for later contemplation. That ten minutes was pure gold, and she didn't even know it. She just nodded and wrote.

_Stupid therapy,_ he'd said to her. _I don't need your fucking therapy. You're not even helping me._ And what did she say? She retreated back into herself, the schoolgirl bookworm. Her voice even had the same shrill quality as she went on and on about "denial." _Fuck you, I'm not in denial,_ he'd countered. She'd laughed at that.

_I'm in denial of what?_

And she'd just looked at him with her stupid all-knowing, all-seeing look. Like she knew the dirty secret and didn't feel like sharing._ Five steps,_ she'd said. _The first is denial. Then you go back and forth between anger and sadness. Then apathy. Then acceptance._ She had it wrong anyway. Wasn't apathy before anger? _You accept your past, accept yourself. And then we can move forward._

_Cut the fucking cue-card rhetoric and talk to me like a human being._

Straightening his tie, he grabbed his robe and got up, thinking about everything he'd lost because of his association with the Dark Lord. Maybe he'd even let Granger have some of those thoughts today. Thoughts about how he'd already been through several interviews and turned in all kinds of applications... but as soon as people read the name on the parchment, they knew. And they made up their mind then.

More that ever, Draco realized one thing:

He wished people would be more open minded.

And yet he had no idea that he was a hypocrite.

* * *

"How's the planning coming along?" Ronald Weasley asked his bride to be, Hermione Granger.

Hermione rubbed her temples. "How do you think?"

There was silence. With an answer like that, they both knew that Hermione should be left alone, or there would be hell to pay. So Ron dropped the subject, searching for a less stressful one.

"Guess who I have to interview for a job today?" he asked. Hermione shrugged and took a sip of her coffee.

"Draco Malfoy. He's applying for a job in the Department of Mysteries as a clerk in the Hall of Prophecy. Isn't that outrageous?" Ron looked at her, seeing that her temper had not improved.

"Guess who I have to treat at ten today," she muttered into her coffee. "Draco Malfoy. I've been seeing him for a fortnight and he's still the same prick. Isn't _that_ outrageous?"

There was silence again. Poor Ron was quickly becoming less and less inclined to speak. He laughed nervously. "What a coincidence."

"Coincidence indeed." Silence.

Thouroughly beaten, he brought her her purse, shoes, and robe, saying, "Well, I have to go. I'll see you tonight." He kissed her cheek and disapparated.

Hermione's fist clenched around her coffee cup. _What is the world coming to?_

* * *

"So I see that you were recently released from Azkaban... I hope you know that I helped Harry with his argument."

Draco nodded and dropped the scowl from his face. He was surprised enough to find that Ronald Weasley was actually taking the interview seriously, and on top of that, being civil. "Thank you," he said.

Ron looked at him. Unspoken words passed between them.

_Prick._

_Ass-wipe._

"I don't need to grill you to see that you've changed a little." _Haha, pull the other one. _"That's good, that's a start. Hermione told me that you became a patient of hers a couple weeks ago. Small world." Ron looked more closely at Draco's school transcripts and cleared his throat. "So... I don't blame you for the Divination grade, mine was worse and I'm still the head of this sector. A good History of Magic grade is definitely a boost... how'd you stay awake in that class?" Ron looked up at him.

_You're trying a little too hard to be understanding, Weasel._ "I recorded his lectures, and listened to them later. But I mainly learned from the textbook." Draco looked down at his pants. His insides churned as he said the next part. "Binns' problem is that he didn't teach with any vitality. The information could have been fascinating if he had only made it so. _I _made it so on my own time." Ew. He hated the sound of his own voice. Talking to Weasel about his passion for history... it was like there were pigs flying outside Weasley's fake windows.

Ron nodded. Draco looked at him more closely, and said, "I know you don't like me very much." _There, I said it. Stop pretending already._

Ron sighed. "I've come to realize that... liking someone is only half of what you can learn from them. Besides, I know that you really need a job. I can connect with that on some level. Any other employer wouldn't even consider you just based on your Azkaban record... two years you did, nearly three. Your... reputation... just seals your fate. Harry talked with Snape, and Dumbledore really put him up to freeing you. It was the right thing to do... though none of us took it very well." _And I still hate you_.

"And you still hate me."

"... Yes, I still do. And I still want you to suffer for all the frustration you put us all through."

Draco looked down. "It's okay. I get it. Dumbledore's... portrait... put him up to it. I'm too much of a git to inspire something good like that from someone, even Potter."

"But... you need a job."

"Yes... yes I do. Very much."

Ron ran a hand through his hair, exposing the freckles on his forehead. "I'm just going to ask you this one question - do you want a job, or just need one?"

Draco saw it. It was a test, like Granger's little tests. To see how far he'd come. Weasley had asked the kind of question that would display his character. "I have all the money I'll ever need... locked away though it may be. Used smartly, it alone could last me several lifetimes. My father would want me to rise up in the Ministry. The Wizenagamot requires that I get a job. I, on the other hand..." - here was the painful admission - "...don't want to waste my life away doing nothing. I _want_ this job more than I need it."

It was the answer Ron had wanted to hear. It was satisfying on a cruel level to know that Malfoy was so pinched, but also satisfying to know that he'd take his job seriously. And as much as he wanted to say, "No, you can't _have_ it," Ron did the right thing.

"Alright, you're in."

Draco sighed with relief.

"But know this." Draco smiled inwardly as a bit of the Ronald Weasley he knew and hated came out. "Any bullshit... any at all, and I'l have _you _eating slugs. I'll tear you limb from limb, poor hot acid down your throat, dissolve your testicles and turn your guts into snakes." Little red patches appeared on Ron's face.

Draco smirked at him. "Duly noted."


	3. Notes

**Chapter Three: Notes**

"Describe the attack."

Draco looked at the ceiling, willing time to go faster. He knew that she would keep him there if he didn't comply with her. _And I bet she loves that power. _"We went there, bugals blaring, and destroyed everything. Then we disapparated." They were discussing the vandalism of the Ministry's Defense Office. Or in other words, the last really devastating blow before the other side disintegrated.

"What were you thinking as you went in?" Hermione made a note on her notepad: _Does not care about details of his escapades._

"I was... hoping we didn't get caught." _Doesn't show remorse for his actions._

"Why did you do it?"

"I kind of had to, seeing as I was leading them." _Does not identify alternatives to actions._

"_What are you writing on that stupid paper?"_

"Just notes," she said with a slight smirk.

"Bull."

She was silent for a couple of seconds before replying, in a strained voice, "What I write is for your own good. Since you are too _delusional_ to figure some things out for yourself, it is up to me to figure them out _for _you. Now. There were ways out of your situation, and yet you did nothing to help yourself. That is what you were sent to Azkaban for... all of the things you ever did. Shall I read your charges?"

"Humor me."

"Alright then. It's quite a list. Let's see..."

Draco shook his head and went back to looking at the ceiling.

"Treason. Attempted murder. Fraud. Some shoplifting... so unlike you to steal considering your money... oh, there's some harrasment thrown in for good measure - "

"Alright, I get it."

"No, you really don't," Hermione said loudly. "You have no _idea_ what you've done. Your whole _life_. How many people have contemplated suicide because of you? How many have you killed? They couldn't prove any of the murder charges of course... even examinations of your memory could not help them conclude anything. But you know, in your head - you know what you've done. How many times have you kicked someone while they were down?" Hermione looked at him pointedly until he brought his gaze down to hers. "Now that I have your attention..."

"Living increases knowledge..." he said faintly, defensively.

"No, it doesn't. _Learning_ increases knowledge. Information increases knowledge. Living only increases experience. And what of _that_ have _you_ lived?"

"_You have no fucking idea._"

Aha! There was something. Hermione ran with it. "Do I? Enlighten me. I challenge you. I bet there's _nothing -_"

"Alright then, _little girl._ You have no fucking idea what it's like to not see the light of day come from any corner for a year. To fear every second. To sit next to a murderer and not shake like a leaf. To force yourself to look in the eyes of the _absolutely evil_... absolute evil itself. Don't fucking _start_ with me. You know nothing."

Instead of getting more agitated, Hermione smiled and made a note on her paper: _Displays human emotions of disgust towards a dark environment._"Lovely," she murmured to herself.

It took him a few seconds before he understood. He put his face in his hands. "I _hate_ it when you do that."

"You hate that it works. I've told you to forget who you are and who I am and look at things the way they are. And when you don't let your guard down, you force me to make you angry so that you start ranting. Because then, you say things that you mean, in your heart, but would never admit. Am I correct? I think so."

"No," he whispered after a moment. "Because of the way things are, I cannot forget who we are."

Hermione looked at him. _He's right. I cannot do my job and not enjoy watching him quake with rage. I cannot do my job without wanting to throw up. I cannot do my job... without wanting to shake him, wake him up. But that _is_ my job._ "Okay then. If you think that will make a difference... think again. It doesn't matter. Because in the end, you are disturbed, and I am here to help you - "

"YOU'RE CONFUSING ME," he yelled. "Of course it matters!"

"I'm confusing you? Try sitting in my chair."

"I would if you'd get your fat arse out of it."

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "I don't worry about my weight, Malfoy. Nice try."

"That's not what I meant. I mean that you never let your mind go and absorb what _I'm_ saying."

"That's all I _ever_ do. I try to understand what the motivation is behind your words, why you did the things that you did. Now, I could send a report to your parole officer saying that you haven't changed one bit because you are _still_ yelling, _still_ cursing, and _still _saying the same things you have been saying - and he'd report it, and they'd give you an extension. Or, I could try to understand you. Which would you prefer? I'm doing the latter, but I won't hesitate to try the former on for size."

Draco shook his head. "Do what you want. I don't care anymore."

Hermione clucked her tongue and looked at her sheet. "Apathy." She made a note.

Draco looked at her, furious again. "DON'T YOU FUCKING START WITH THAT FIVE STEP SHIT! That shit doesn't work!"

"The hell it doesn't. Who's the therapist here? Now. Stop talking about me. Do you really not care? Or are you just lazy?"

Hello, ceiling. "Both."

* * *

"Let me ask you something. As a person who works in the Hall of Prophecy, do you believe in Fate?"

He was looking at the ceiling as usual; he thought he saw a little brown splotch up there last time... there it was. It kind of looked like a bunny.

"Do you believe in destiny?"

No actually, the splotch kind of looked like... a person with big arms. A fat person with big arms.

"Crabbe," he said. He missed him a bit.

Hermione took the water glass off her desk and threw the contents at him.

"WHAT THE FUCK, GRANGER."

"Answer my question."

"FUCK NO."

He was her last patient for today. After this, she could go home, run a nice, hot bath, dig out that book she'd bought on survival transfiguration, and settle down for the remainder of her afternoon. Who really gave a hoot about Malfoy anyway? She didn't know what kept her going when she had to see him. Perhaps... some kind of revenge. _I'll make you see that everything you ever did was dirt. Everyone you ever knew and loved was just as low as you; everything you ever thought you learned about the way the world works is crap. That's what I'll give you - the present of understanding. And I know it will break you._

"Answer my question or I'm chucking the owl treats at you next. And not the dry kind."

Ew, mice. "I don't believe in destiny... but I believe in Fate."

"Aren't they kind of the same?" Hermione asked, taking up her quill again.

Draco shook his head. "Fate is... like the story was written down before it was told, and we are living the telling of that story. Destiny is following what we think is our right path. Destiny is bullshit."

Hermione nodded. "Is it true that Lord Voldemort was going to discard his old body and use yours once he killed Harry?"

Draco looked down at his feet. That was something he didn't want to think about. He nodded.

"Did he describe that as your destiny? You were 'destined' to be the host of the most powerful wizard... that is why your father pushed you so hard in school." Hermione kept writing.

He nodded again.

"And when you didn't perform, and developed your own brain instead of the brain they all wanted for you, it occurred to them that they should just transport the soul..."

"Bellatrix was the obvious choice for a successor, after my father lost a bit of his faith. She was the perfect choice, in fact. She believed, to her core, that his ideals were law. She loved every inch of everything that the Dark Lord spewed, every atom of his being. She was, in a way, more evil than he himself."

Hermione set down her quill and activated her tape recorder silently. "So... you are telling me that Bellatrix Lestrange was next in line for the 'throne'?"

"Yeah. But of course she was killed before he was. So when they all turned to me... I went for it. I said, why not? All the power you want, and you may be able to do something constructive with it. Because what does general killing solve? Nothing. When I came into power, it was not about muggleborns anymore - purifying the world. It was about rising against the establishment. So it wasn't about killing _people_. It became about killing the _right_ people... and the right things.

"We started with the influential writers. Two were picked off, as I recall. Naturally, that devastated the academic community. But what did they stand for? They stood for communism, social order, traditional values, all that stuff that is utterly useless in the real world. I told the Death Eaters that life wasn't about politics - it was about survival. And we were going to wipe out everything else.

"The Ministry was next. We got rid of the imperioused moles - the people who would have not agreed with us. And then the property itself - the fountain in front of the Archives, the Defense Department. And then I was thrown in Azkaban. Which was bad timing on the Ministry's part, because it was _after_ I was thrown in that the killing and hatred started up again. I had nearly converted them."

Hermione nodded, absolutely fascinated. "The goal was to destroy the franchises, the establishment, the government and everything it stood for - corruption?"

Draco leaned further into the cushions. "Sort of."

She stopped the recorder and wrote some notes on her notepad.

"Listen," Draco said, looking at her. "I need some sleeping pills."

Shaking her head, Hermione opened his file and rummaged through the papers. He stared at her. "You don't _need_ them. You want them. You want it to be easy."

"Not everything is as deep as that, Granger. Just take it for what it is - I can't sleep at night. It's painful. It causes me to not perform at my best during the day. I need relief."

Hermione stopped and looked at him. "If I give you sleeping pills, are you going to abuse them?"

Draco shook his head unconvincingly. "Probably not. Just don't give me a reason to." Hermione snorted.

_I don't need to give you a reason to become a drug addict - I need to give you a reason to want something different for yourself._

She started writing the prescription.


	4. Lightless

**Chapter 4: Lightless**

Draco looked at the bottle of sleeping pills he'd gotten from St. Mungo's that afternoon.

_Are you going to abuse them?_

"Fuck yes," he said, opening the bottle. He'd love to see the expression on her face when he presented the bottle to her the next day, half empty.

_What does that solve_?

Her voice rang in his head. He stopped. _Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because seeing her angry at me is not what I want. I want..._

What did he want? He wanted to know why she turned out the way she did - there was a start. Why did she put up such a facade when things could have been different? Of course, it was his fault too. He was beginning to understand that. But... why were the two of them so different? They were like the two sides of a magnet. They refused to get along.

Or... were they exactly the same? After all, those different sides of the magnet attract each other. They gravitate toward each other.

Draco gulped down two pills and got under his covers, hoping the pills were quick.

They weren't.

* * *

"Last night, I thought of something." Draco looked up at his therapist, the one and only Hermione. "It's really put everything into perspective for me."

"Really? That's wonderful. Would you like to share what you discovered?"

Draco looked at her. The one "wonderful" thing about this whole business - him being out of Azkaban for his crimes (thanks to some string pulling by Potter and his own wallet) and into what everyone affectionately called "treatment" - was that he didn't kill himself. Having her as a therapist, a counselor, a shrink. Her treating him as if he had never said a word to her, never called her names or threatened her life, and then making him hate himself for ever looking at her with a scowl. _That_ was "wonderful."

But he could see it.

He could see, under those perfectly placed facial features that she was fuming inside. In his head, he could hear her argument with her supervisor - "Why can't he be transferred? You know how I feel about him. Yes, I know this is my job, but I don't want our past to interfere with the greater good... his greater good." They'd probably told her that it would be theraputic for herself as well, a test of her ability to stay professional or some other bullshit.

He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to get in her hostile little face and say, "This is what I am. Why don't you fucking hit me? I know you want to."

And then, last night happened. He thought of the first time he'd really seen her - he wasn't a sportsman or the best thinker, but he had a terrific memory, a fact that kicked him in the nuts more times than he would have ever liked.

He'd greeted her with a nod in the hallway. She wasn't his type in any sense - he'd known he wouldn't be able to stand her as a friend or a potential "life partner" as his father had put it - but she'd put the nails in the coffin in that moment. He'd known she was smart, and therefore a good ally for the sake of his studies. She was a Griffindor, which wasn't that much of a problem. But she'd done it to herself with one head movement.

She'd turned her nose up at him.

He'd seen it - it was like a brown aura of gore that floated around her person. He would get conformation from his buddies later, but he saw it in that moment.

She was muggleborn. And not only that: she was snobbish. She was borderline ugly.

And she had the nerve to turn her nose up at him?

He'd looked at her and seen something - an internal light, an awareness. Around her body, he saw the aura, the drippy grossness that he could almost feel as she walked by - the stain and stench of the muggleborn. But it didn't matter until she'd turned up her nose at him.

It took a lot of energy to stop the rage in his blood. It had been the first time anyone had really insulted him. And everything about it - about how she had no clue, no bloody idea about anything... made his blood run black.

It had also been the first time that he'd seen that light, the first time he'd seen it... and didn't care who was harboring it.

"Mudblood."

She hadn't heard him. She'd kept on walking. He got her later though, in second year. _That_ one she'd heard. Oh yes.

Draco cocked his head and cleared his throat before saying, "I was thinking about us."

Hermione furrowed her eyebrows. "Define 'us.'"

His eyes were penetrating. "You and me. About how we're quite a pair."

Hermione hated when patients inquired about her personal life, or included themselves into _her_ problems. She was there to help them, not herself. "I still don't understand."

Draco sighed and sat up. "You and me. Two of a kind, polar opposites, opposites that attract. North and South. Red and green, gold and silver. Heaven and hell. Fire and ice. You know the poem 'Fire and Ice' by Robert Frost? You must, you read. 'Some say the world will end in fire' - "

" - 'Some say in ice. From what I know of desire, I hold with those who favor fire.'"

"'But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great..."

"'... And would suffice.'" There was silence. It was quite obviously her favorite poem, and it quite obviously annoyed her that he knew it and was stepping on it.

"Like warm, creamy hot chocolate..." he stood up and slowly walked the short distance over to her desk, emphasizing every word, "... and an ice cold glass of lemonade; like the beautiful, hot day and the dark, starry night; the sky and the sea-"

"_Malfoy_," she said, letting her emotions sneak into her words. She was frustrated. "What point are you making here?"

"... Pure-blood prince trimmed with silver and green, and the mudblood bookworm in her lumpy red and gold jumper-"

"That's enough, you prick."

A wave of satisfaction spread through him, and he smirked as he sat down. "We could have been so perfect together."

Silence again, crushing silence, blaring in Hermione's ears and nose, filling her lungs and choking her. Now how could she respond to that? There were so many things she wanted to say to that. Things like, 'I thought you hated me,' and, 'maybe if you got off your pedestal for two minutes.' Her voice struggled with her next words.

"I am getting married, Malfoy."

_Hmm. Interesting choice. Is it just me, or is she putting a flimsy little marriage vow between us amidst everything else?_

"Lucky you. Or lucky him." He was still smirking. She was cracking, and he loved it. Where was that little lion inside her, that Griffindor lion? Where was that pretty light? He wanted to see her go crazy. _Here, kitty kitty,_ he thought.

"You're insane-"

"Am I? I've realized something. All that... crap... about blood, and allegiance, and loyalty and deception and breaking rules and codes... its worth is all utterly bullshit. I'm not gonna say that we're all the same - because we aren't, and we never will be the same - but I know that all that crap just clouds the truth, the core, the real _meat _of everything... I'm a genius."

Hermione crossed her arms. "Oh really? A genius? Well, _genius_, it may have escaped your notice, but I am more than twice the person you'll ever be. So yes, we _aren't_ the same."

"Aren't you supposed to be making me feel better? I can't even concentrate in here with you looking so - "

Hermione banged her fist on her desktop with an echoing thud. "Are you sure you want to finish that sentence?" she asked darkly.

"... annoying!"

She stared at him, unable to say anything. He continued.

"The real issue is, and always has been, emotions. That's right. What do you feel? You always ask me like you really care or like that question can even... contain... what I feel. What kind of general bullshit is that? I feel like my life has been wasted. That's right, get your little fucking notepad. I feel like I'm trying to wake up from a nightmare that I can't break the surface of and I don't know why. I feel like kicking every cat and dog and person and inanimate object I happen across. I feel like strangling you."

At this point Hermione's hand was firmly gripping her wand under her desk, while her other hand was on the panic button next to her purse.

"And I want everything other than that to go away. Stop your fucking facade. I want _everyone _to stop. Stop turning your nose up at someone because you think that they have half a brain. Stop going by the rules in some book and feeling the need to get all self-righteous and 'good-hearted' in certain situations. Everyone in this world... everything just feels like a facsimilie. Pretense and gossip and make-up and name brand clothes; all kinds of _shit_. Everything feels like a painting in front of my eyes, like people have no souls. And I find someone who does have a soul, a brain, a thought in her twisting, bushy little head - and she stoops down to the dirt. She has a light, and she masks it. She puts up her front. _That _is why I'm so angry, why I need medication, why I can't go through a minute in here without wanting to move your furniture around, disturb your colleagues, get ink on your fucking khakis and rip your perfectly selected expression right off your fucking face."

Through her rage and fear, Hermione saw it. She liked to call it a Breaking Point. A point where some of the chips fell into place, where the dim light brightened and the engine started. The engine of change. A lot of what he'd said made sense, though she'd never admit some of it under gunpoint - or wandpoint. Like how she felt the same thing when she looked at Ron - like he was a part of the wallpaper, a body and a beating heart with no light behind his eyes.

"And what about you?" she asked quietly, still angry. "All your history of pretense and 'bullshit'. Were you 'lightless' as well?"

Something he'd said had actually gotten through. It didn't faze him. "Necessary and partially incurable... though admittedly enjoyable to a degree." Of course she wasn't going down without a fight. Her question had nearly nixed his whole argument. His face blazed and he opened his mouth, but was cut short by her next words.

She calmed herself down quietly, and organized his papers on her desk. "Congratulations, Draco. You are one step closer." She looked into his furious eyes then, and smiled. She could see his light, and she knew he could see hers. It calmed him down instantly.

It would be hours later before he realized that she had called him by his first name.

* * *

"How's treatment going, Malfoy?" Ron asked casually as they stocked shelves with tiny glass bulbs - prophecies. It was a tedious business, and not the kind of job for a bloke as ungraceful as Weasley... with his huge hands and sudden movements. Draco was all grace. All poise. He smiled to himself, having successfully inflated his ego a bit.

"It's hell. But she said that I'm 'one step closer' the other day."

"Really? One step closer to what?"

Draco shook his head and reached into the box. Ew, dust. He _really_ missed having a wand. "No idea. Killing myself?"

"We'd love that. No offense."

"None taken."

They finished off the box in silence and Ron went back to his desk... where he should definitely stay. Draco sighed and fixed Ron's row. He had untidy wand-work. It's like he wasn't living in the same house as Granger at all. _Granger's _wand-work would have been perfect. It would have been stellar.

_Ew. I did NOT just say that._

He realized then that as much as he wanted to, he could not change the past - he could not unsay anything.

_Now you need to make your future better. Look forward._

"Get out of my head," he muttered.


	5. Giving

**Chapter Five: Giving**

_Progress takes time_.

She wished that he would just _see_ things. Why couldn't he just understand?

"Ugh, I don't even know what I'm talking about. Everything is so complicated with him."

Hermione had once had a conversation with Harry about evil. They were talking about Lord Voldemort - about if he was born evil or if he became evil because of his experiences. Hermione, of course, thought that he was born evil. Her argument was that no one could be trained or turned so much to become so evil. Harry had a different opinion.

"He wasn't taught the kind of morals we were taught, the way we were taught them. He grew up in an orphanage - they required discipline. They had chalkboard morals, and you can't explain that kind of thing to an eight year old or ten year old with an ambitious mind. They need to live it. And all he lived was himself."

"He was just resilient to morals because he was evil - "

Harry had shaken his head. "He'd looked at everything with a 'what's the difference?' kind of attitude. All kids do it at some point. 'What's the difference if I take a shower once a day or twice? I'll just get dirty again' - that kind of thing. For him, it was killing. What's the difference... we all die eventually. Hurting people? What's the difference... we all feel pain from something. I mean, he's the foulest creature to ever have walked the earth... but he wasn't born that way. I'm not saying that it wasn't his fault... I'm saying that he became that."

Hermione wondered - was Draco a product of his environment? She'd asked him many times. She'd asked him the first time he stepped into her office.

_How am I supposed to answer that? You've already made your mind up_.

What she thought needed to stop mattering - she saw that much. She needed to see this from his point of view...

* * *

"Why did you hinder us? You knew that we were doing something important."

"I don't know, Granger. I really don't know."

That had been his answer for most of the questions she had asked that day. Now instead of yelling at her, he was being unresponsive. She knew he still had some anger left in him - she needed to draw it out.

Suck the poison from the wound.

"Is it because you are a monumental _prick_, in general?"

Draco brought his gaze down from the ceiling. That splotch looked more like a bunny today. "Maybe."

"So you were born that way?" She wrote a note on her pad: _Refuses to acknowledge personality properly. Apathy?_

"I don't know."

Hermione sighed and made another note: _State of Confusion._

She'd have to try something else to get through to him - he couldn't be made angry today.

Draco was not doing it on purpose. He'd been thinking a lot lately, and found that he could not figure out what made him a prick. His father, maybe? His environment? The Slytherin dungeon? All the pranks and smirking and scowling? The people who could laugh and have fun while he couldn't?

The Dark Lord?

Or was everything perfectly set up for the right kind of success, and his conscience just came in too late to save him?

"Why do you feel the need to be better than other people?"

Hermione stared at him. He was doing it again - dragging her, personally, into it. "Well... I think a lot of people do it... in order to cover up the fact that they are afraid; afraid of what might happen if someone looked at them and didn't like what he or she saw. People do it to prove something. People do it... to boost their self-esteem."

Draco shook his head, still staring at the ceiling. He'd given her the opportunity to be honest and she'd done the therapist thing. "I was asking you, not 'people'."

Hermione exhaled and put her list of questions away. She wasn't going to get anything deep out of him today. It was time to move on to something lighter.

"What are you passionate about?"

Draco looked at her, wondering if it was a therapist thing again, or if she was actually interested. He shook his head and looked at the ceiling. "Making babies cry. What do you think?" When she didn't answer, he rolled his eyes and said, "History."

"Really?" she asked, writing. "Why is that?"

Therapist thing, definitely. Burned again. "I find it interesting - you learn a lot about being human when you watch the rise and fall of civilizations, rise and fall of cultures. I learned a lot about people and about being a leader from history. I learned not to let power go to my head. Kind of." He smirked.

Hermione nodded and finished her sentence with a flourish. "Learning about the mistakes of all the great ones of the world... as a person who grew up as a muggle, my parents pushed me hard with books. History was my favorite, math my second favorite. I learned all I could - about ancient empires like the Roman Empire and the Mongol Empire. And then, when I got to Hogwarts, I discovered that there was a whole different side to every major conflict. An 'underground' battle, affecting the muggle battle. That is why I studied so hard at Hogwarts - I wanted to learn the other side of everything. I wanted to explore this 'new world' to its fullest."

She was sharing a piece of herself with him, when she normally wanted to keep the conversation revolving around him... "Why are you asking me this?"

"Because... I got you something. I don't know if it will, in the end, conflict with your house arrest or not... but I tried to pull some strings for this case. Ron told me that you seemed interested in history, so I got a signed permission slip for obtaining a pass to the NASROP Archives - "

"_No_," he breathed. The NASROP Archives was a huge account of some of the oldest and most valuable documents in the world. Historical writings went back further than the history books ever could. Obtaining a pass was extremely difficult - one had to have two signatures on a Ministry permission form, one from the Minister himself, and one from a high ranking ministry official, preferably a head of a department. Also, one needed a written, relevant explanation and a cosigner on a security form. It was nearly impossible to get a pass, even for a day.

"How did you get that?" he asked breathlessly, as she handed him the permission form. The Minister had indeed signed it... along with Harry Potter. "Oh," he said, defeated. "There goes Potter again."

"He's in charge of the Department of Defense. If he told _anyone_ that he signed it for you, his entire department would probably maul him to death, considering what you did to it. _I _put him up to it. He didn't want you to have it."

"Why?" Draco asked quietly. It was a huge honor to even have the permission form signed.

Hermione turned her eyes to his. "Because you need it."

Draco shook his head and looked at the form again. How hard had the secretary at the front desk at the Ministry laughed when she'd requested the form? She could have done anything else - given him a book or some kind of ancient first edition scroll... this was huge. Too huge. He couldn't wait to go up to their office and get a pass... but he needed a cosigner.

"Would you cosign the security statement?" he asked. She hesitated, then nodded.

"I have no idea how to thank you for this Granger... God knows, I don't deserve it."

Hermione picked up her quill and wrote a note on her pad before saying, "Just say thank you. You're done for the day, I think. You have to be back at work in thirty minutes, right?"

Draco didn't understand her at all. However big her gift was, he still felt his stomach turn as he said the words. "Thank you."

_Well, maybe it was slightly manipulative_._ But at least he can open his mind up a little, and hopefully that taught him something about giving._Hermione's goal was to start him working on something as a part of his rehabilitation. Something he could spend his time on. Since he was under house arrest, he couldn't do any activities that could be called "relaxing" or "fun." He was restricted from attending major events, concerts, bars, all kinds of stuff. He wasn't even allowed in the new Quidditch shop that open up across the street from Flourish and Blotts. In order to get him that form, she had to convince the Minister that it was part of his rehabilitation. "Think of it as busywork," she'd said to him.

She had done something right. The only question was... was Malfoy going to make the most of it?

* * *

_Because you need it._

Draco stalked around his apartment, feeling extremely pissy. Why had Granger done that for him? What did she want?

It made him uncomfortable that he owed her. Her, of all people to owe. And Harry Potter.

_That prick did it AGAIN._

How was Draco supposed to look at Potter in the face now? He'd seen him walking around the Ministry... and Potter had the nerve to lift his hand in greeting.

It was all just so... confusing. So uncomfortable. So _weird_.

Did she honestly just expect a thank you? He would have expected the world in return for something like that. Were they just stupid or something?

_Is that what you are supposed to do? Give people things and just let them walk away?_

Yes. That is exactly what one is supposed to do. They'd taught him something like that in school. For once in his life, Draco thought he understood Potter and his outfit. Sort of.

_The apocalypse is coming._


	6. Letting Go

**Chapter Six: Letting Go**

"I absolutely hate his guts," Hermione said coarsely, stabbing her meat with a little more rigor than was necessary. The plate chimed in protest.

She was raging after they had spent an entire "therapy session" arguing. And then he'd had the nerve to tell her that he'd made the appointment with the NASROP liaison office for that day, without notifying her?

What. An. Asshole.

Harry was sympathetic. "I honestly had no idea that they would assign him to you in the first place. I shouldn't have signed that paper. Can't you get out of this whole thing?"

"I tried that. And now, I'm starting to think that he really needs _me_ as his counselor. I'm probably the only one that can turn him around. Not to mention it has its perks." Hermione smirked around some mashed potatoes.

"She's torturing him," Ron whispered to Harry, earning him a kick in the knee. "What? You know you are. He talks about it at work."

She promptly choked. "He _talks_ at work? What does he say?"

Ron looked at Harry nervously. "Well... yeah, a bit."

"But what does he say?"

Ron looked down at his plate and played with the potatoes, making little swirls. "Well, today, he said that you make him feel completely stripped down and vulnerable, like... being naked on stage, I think was the analogy - "

"I DO NOT! I'm helping him see the error of his ways, helping him understand how absolutely _foul_ he's been!"

Harry looked at her. "Maybe he needs something else."

"I'm trying to wake that prat up! He's asleep."

"No, he's not asleep Hermione. He's just... he just acts like he is."

Hermione chewed furiously. Why was _Harry_ on his side now? Harry hates him as much as the rest of them, if not more.

"Hermione... do you want to know why I agreed to defend Malfoy in order to get him released early?"

Hermione nodded. "Dumbledore."

"I did it because of something I remembered seeing him do... he'd kill me for telling you. But... do you remember when I cursed him in sixth year using one of the Prince's spells? He was going to use the Cruciatus curse, yes, but he was going to because... I saw him crying."

Hermione set down her fork in astonishment. _Malfoy cries?_

"He was crying about all the pressure Voldemort was putting on him... and his father. And I think he was frustrated with Snape for trying to interfere... and he was saying all this to Moaning Myrtle, of all people... It just, I don't know. It redeemed him a little. In my mind."

Hermione shook her head. She once again had too much to think about. "I have other patients too you know. I can't understand why _he_ is the only one stressing me out. Guess who came in the other day? Pansy Parkinson. Driven mad by some boyfriend she had while in Spain, or Brazil... somewhere like that. She just cried the entire time... I don't even think she realized who she was talking to. But my point is that all my other patients don't even know that there is something wrong with their thinking... they just _trust_ me. They listen to me, and I see them eating my words up... I just wonder what is wrong with him."

"Well, now you know that he is a wuss. But we already knew that."

"Not helping, Ginny."

"But think about it - it means that he caves under that kind of pressure. It means he was unhappy during that time."

"He doesn't like the tables being turned on him," Ron put forth. "We've all insulted him before, and he takes it in one of three ways - "

" - Anger, humor, or defeat..." Hermione said. She thought for a second. She'd seen all three, but very little of the 'defeated' Malfoy. What would she have to say to him in order to make his heart bleed?

The others were still discussing him. " - Which could be twisted to mean that he doesn't like hurting people."

"No, he _definitely_ likes hurting people. He just doesn't like to receive it."

"I don't think that's true." Luna Lovegood, silent this entire time, spoke. The group looked at her. "I think he's just angry at something, and he wants to pinpoint it somewhere. Right now, he's blaming Hermione. So he lashes out at her. You need to make him understand that he is the source of his own unhappiness... and that making other people unhappy will not fix that. He needs to make up for it."

Hermione nodded. "I think you've got something there, Luna."

Luna smiled brightly. "Maybe I could be a therapist."

Instead of laughing, the group nodded in agreement.

* * *

Hermione couldn't sleep. Ron, as usual, was breathing evenly beside her. The sound usually calmed her, but she felt nothing but disruption.

Of course Malfoy cries, everyone cries. Men don't like to admit that they cry, but they do. She'd seen Harry do it. Ron's done it. She could not dispel the thought from her head, however, because it was so... weird. Why was Malfoy the way he was? Who's fault was it?

Or did that matter?

She'd been taught that the only way to fix a problem was to know its source. The only problem with Draco is that he did not have a simple source - his problem came from everything in his life, everything he was ever exposed to. His problem came from every angle - external forces, internal forces. She couldn't correct the world for him, correct time. Fix his brain. _Obviliate._

What does a memory charm solve? Nothing. It just erases everything. Nothing's fixed or made better... it is simply deleted.

She saw it. Of course, she knew from the beginning... but it was a little clearer now. He needed to look back and know that it was his life, and his screw up. By blaming people who were already dead and gone, and things that he couldn't change, he wasn't solving anything. He needed to break through all of that and just... let go. Let his guard go, his comebacks and insults go. His finger-pointing go. He needed to break free.

That was the answer.

Unfortunately, she didn't understand that _she_ was the biggest source.

* * *

"Threatening _me _doesn't add inches to your dick, Malfoy_._"

Oooo. _Rawr._ "You'd know, wouldn't you, Granger?"

"Maybe I would. But then again, you wouldn't since you have no balls to speak of - where were we before you started calling me names?" Hermione was trying to get a glimpse of that 'defeated' Malfoy, but so far she'd gotten him in his smirking prat mode.

"We were talking about your mustache."

Hermione rubbed her temples. Nothing was going right with him today. She needed to find that happy center of her world and step into it -

"Don't you fucking _dare_. I see you putting your shields up."

"What am I supposed to do? I can't have a bloody intelligent conversation with you without wanting to tear your stupid head off! Now sit down, _shut up_, and pay attention, for once in your pathetic existence! You aren't letting me help you!"

"Oh shut _up_. You aren't letting yourself help me."

Hermione shook her head. _Counting backwards from ten. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six..._ _this isn't helping._

"Stop that. Just stop it, it's so annoying!" Draco yelled.

"Stop what?"

"Stop getting flustered and forcing yourself to calm down. Stop your huffing and snorting and trying to 'collect your thoughts.' It drives me nuts."

"What do you want from me then?" Hermione asked, throwing her hands up.

Seconds ticked by. Hermione stared at him pointedly, holding his eyes for the longest time she ever had. He stared back, unwilling to answer. His eyes softened a bit as he continued looking. She wanted to know what he _wanted_ from her... she didn't know how to help him. She looked very vulnerable when she did that, just the way she _should_ look. He didn't ever want that snobby look to come over her face ever again. How could she know what he was trying to say to her? She didn't get it, even when he'd spelled it out for her. Maybe she got it on some "Oh, he's making progress" level, but not on any... emotional level. Not in her heart. She didn't _get it_.

_He_ didn't even know what he was trying to say to her... not really. Not truly.

"You don't understand," he said, looking away and getting up.

"Help me to."

He looked back at her. For the first time he really looked at her in her entirety - her brown hair, the little freckles on her nose. The shapeless blue sweater she was wearing in the middle of summer, with a bit of a white collared shirt poking through the top. Her face was getting thinner. Possibly stress. Her hair hasn't as neatly braided as it usually was... also stress. Her forehead was pink. Stress.

He willed himself to care. Did he care? Did he honestly care about any of it, or anything? Did he even care enough about himself?

"I can't even help myself right now."

"That's what I'm here for."

"Really? Or are you here because you think messing with me is fun? Am I sport to you, Granger?"

She ignored that as an invitation to argue. She had a game plan, and she was going to return to it. Goal - see him defeated. Make him aware of what he has to do: atone. "I'm here because I feel like I'm the only one who can help you."

"Your boss didn't feel like going through all the trouble of a transfer."

"You wouldn't be able to talk to any other counselor."

"You want some little petty revenge for all the years I 'tortured' you."

"Yes, I do. I want you to understand how foul you've been."

"_I get that. I know that I'm foul. Don't you think I get that?_"

"No. You've never once apologized."

He fell silent. This argument was getting very awkward, very fast, and he hated that almost more than anything. She was doing it again - stripping him down and putting him under a spotlight.

"How can I apologize for that? You apologize for getting mud on someone's new pants, or stepping on their cloak and tripping them. You can't say. 'Oh, I'm sorry I killed your dreams for a better future.' 'Oh, I'm sorry I tortured you for seven years.'"

"Well, you better think of something. Because there are a lot of expectant faces looking at you, wanting remorse. And you aren't showing any."

"I HATE YOU."

"And how does _that_ solve your problem?"

"I DON'T FUCKING CARE."

"Yes you do. _Yes you do. _You care. And you just don't know how to atone."

Draco felt something familiar grow in his throat. Oh shit, he was going to cry. It was coming - fuck no. Not here, not now.

Hermione saw it. She saw the snarling scowl drop. She saw him swallow. _There it is. Come on, I need you to drop all of this crap. I need you to focus._ "Hello? I'm not talking to the wall. Though I get more results out of it than you."

It was a sure thing. He felt his throat close up completely and his head swim. His eyes prickled. How fast could he make it to the door before the dam broke? He looked over at it.

"Nope," Hermione said, followed by a sealing charm. _Gottcha._ "You aren't running from me, you coward. You aren't running from yourself anymore. You are _not running_. You are going to stand there, and you are going to face it. You are going to face the fact that you need to make up for everything. You are going to let it wash over you, let it consume you. Let it eat away every part of you until there is nothing left to hate, and nothing left to hide."

And all at once, it ceased to matter. Everything did. Wetness filled his eyes.

"Just let go."

He covered his face and dropped down to the floor, behind the couch. He hoped that she couldn't see him.

Unfortunately, she saw everything.


	7. Broken

**Chapter Seven: Broken**

Getting Malfoy to cry was not the only new experience for Hermione - seeing him cry was completely foreign.

It was the strangest thing she'd ever seen.

He just crumpled to the floor. He made no sound... he just put his head in his arms and pushed tears out of his eyes. She hoped, sincerely, that he was expelling some stress with those tears. Because she'd never seen him so tense, never seen him looking so... lifeless.

"Now's the time to rearrange your life. Now's the time to live for something - "

"Shut up," he said quietly. His tears were in his voice.

Geez. This was even to much mushiness for _her_, and she had people crying all over the place every day. Her worst for the day had definitely been Pansy... until now. Hermione got up from her seat and made her way over to him. He looked so... small, curled up like that. It was unreal. She knelt down next to him.

"Go away," he whispered. _You really want to leave this room_.

Hermione shook her head and reached out uncertainly, finally placing a hand on Draco's shoulder. He stiffened. _You really want to leave this room._

"There is nothing you can say to me right now," he whispered through his arms. "_Nothing."_

"Look at me."

"No."

"_Look at me._"

Draco raised his arms slightly, then shook his head. "I won't."

"You're hiding again - "

"Is this that you wanted to see?" His head shot up in a fury of white blond hair. His eyes were indescribable. They looked like hand blown glass orbs... of a glittering ocean. Shining, the way they were, Hermione could see right through him. And at this proximity... she could almost see his soul through his eyes. She blinked uncertainly.

"Happy now? Run home to Ronny so you can laugh in peace."

"I'm... not laughing, Draco."

"But you want to."

"No, I honestly don't."

"I beg to differ." Silence. He wouldn't let her go with his eyes. She felt like a dying fire being stared down by the bitter cold and the ever-stretching sky. She was being consumed by his shining eyes... and she hated herself for making him act this way.

She'd known, in some part of her, that she was pushing too hard. Now, she felt like an abusive, cold step-parent who cared about nothing except for results. About the ends, not the means. Because there were times when no end could justify certain means. Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, had just had his guard completely shattered. How was she going to build him back up? She felt like she was responsible for sewing him together, but what kind of job would she do?

For the longest time, Hermione had wanted to see him like this. She'd wanted to crush him with the weight of everything she'd felt - everything about being muggleborn, being friends with Harry, being smart, and being shunned constantly. She'd wanted to see him stagger with the burden of everything that he had done to turn her life to crap, everything for which he was directly - or indirectly - responsible.

She'd wanted him to beg for forgiveness and swear to undo his very birth for her.

But how did it feel now that he was finally in a place to be burdened? Just the thought that he was fragile made her want to drive the stake of her disgust and absolute pain right through him.

But for whatever reason, she couldn't. It felt... wrong.

She realized that her next words could mean everything. They could spell success or failure... and more importantly, they could determine whether or not he would stay broken, or would begin to heal. And the other question was... was she holding onto the shoulder of someone concrete... or someone that was already dead inside?

Instead of speaking, she studied his face. He wasn't twisting his face in a sneer or a scowl, and he looked a lot more pleasant that way - he almost looked like a child with that look on his face. She could see all kinds of things she would never have noticed otherwise - a small scar under his eye, the blackheads on his nose, how pale his lips were. A little dimple on his chin.

"Say something," he whispered. A tear made it's way down his cheek.

It was too much - she wanted to look away. Now she felt like a pervert. This was completely indecent, what she was seeing. No one should ever have to see this... no one should ever have to feel this.

Draco didn't care that she was uncomfortable. She'd signed up for it. _Fuck it,_ he thought. _She wants to break me, fine. Break me. I don't care anymore._

"You love it." It was an accusation.

Hermione shook her head, unable to stop staring.

"Say it." _Break me._

"No," she mumbled.

"Say it." _Break me._

She shook her head again. He leaned forward and narrowed his eyes.

"_Say it,_" he breathed dangerously, headily, his breath pooling on her face. Hermione's senses shut off temporarily as her brain clouded.

"Um." Her own eyes brewed tears.

"That's what I thought," he said, pushing back from her and standing up. She was briefly consumed by cold air - she hadn't realized that his body heat was warming her up. "Let me out of here."

Using a nonverbal command, she unlocked the door.

He left without another word, wiping his face on his sleeve.

* * *

Hermione didn't know how long she sat there, on the floor behind her couch. It could have been hours. She looked at her watch - twenty minutes had gone by.

She could not get that image out of her head - that image of his face, in her direct line of vision - completely obscuring the room; his eyes like glass bubbles full of grey diamonds. His soul, that light that she could see as a tear dropped down his face. _Say it_, her brain echoed mercilessly. _Say it._

_Say it - you love seeing me this way. You love seeing me come crashing down. You love every second you see my walls shatter._

"Ugh," she said, getting up. Her stiff joints groaned, and her knees made cracking noises.

_Well, _she thought, trying to comfort herself, _at least he understands now. At least he can move forward now. _Everything she had seen... it all felt so private. As a therapist, she thoroughly inserted herself into people's business, and the most personal of matters came up. Even talking to Pansy this afternoon, she got a glimpse into the other girl's private life. Through her sobs, Pansy had recollected the first time she'd seen Him. The way she described her lover... it was magical, and poetic. And extremely, extremely, close to her heart, as if she had thought about it a hundred times. It had nearly brought Hermione to tears.

But there was nothing more private than what she had witnessed with Malfoy.

She had seen him in many states - taunting, on his pedestal; in the hospital wing with a shat-upon ego; whining like a child in class; staring coldly as she answered a question in detail... some things were hard to forget. She'd even seen him in some very vulnerable states, and wished for the day when the shoe was on the other foot and it was _her_ turn to show him.

But what had she shown him? Her dark side, maybe. She honestly was trying to help, but there was still that little bit of her that wanted him to crawl out of her office, completely torn down. She'd wanted to completely dismember the very fabric of his mind, completely destroy the foundation that his knowledge, beliefs, wants, needs, and comforts were based on... and then she'd wanted to pour salt all over him. Watch him burn up in his own grief until he succumbed to better ideas, more constructive ideas. Her ideas. The right ideas.

And now that she'd nearly gotten there, she felt as if she'd killed him rather than helped him.

"What's the big deal?" she said, laughing to herself. "So he cried. Big deal. Let's move on."

Words, unfortunately, could never change how she felt.

* * *

She'd sounded exactly like his father - the same tone and everything.

_Hello? I'm not talking to the wall. Though I get more results out of it than you._

Ugh. He couldn't believe that he'd actually cried. _Cried_. There was no way he was going back there now - he'd have to kill himself.

The bottle of sleeping pills called his name quietly from his shelving unit. Could he even kill himself with those? He'd probably just slip into a coma.

_Don't even think about it._

He clenched his teeth - her voice was still inside his head. "Leave me _alone_," he muttered. Was that too much to ask for? He just wanted everything - the world - to leave him the fuck _alone_.

He looked around his flat. It was in desperate need of furnishings - he hadn't even moved the bed into one of the two rooms. It sat on the opposite wall from the front door, with a built in shelf next to it. There was nothing else but a chain hanging from one corner of the living room - it obviously used to hold a light, or chandelier. He wanted food, but here was nothing but a bottle of ketchup in the fridge. Why did he have that, anyway? There was probably some cans of soup in the cabinet... ugh. Where was a house elf when you needed one?

_Pathetic,_ she whispered.

It was going to be curfew in a few hours. If only he could apparate without being thrown back in Azkaban... he'd go down to the NASROP. It was located in Poland, and the only way he was going to get there without being canned... was by portkey. An authorized portkey. Paperwork, paperwork.

Shit.

His thoughts were disrupted by a knock on his front door. He looked over at the fireplace. People knew his new address... friends and family (shudder) would use the fireplace.

He opened the door, and immediately closed it again.

What. The. FUCK. "Go away," he said through the door, before a loud bang sounded behind him and he was pushed flat on his face by the back of it. He'd forgotten that she had a wand.

"WHAT THE FUCK, GRANGER."

"...Yeah, sorry about that."

"GET OUT OF HERE."

"I don't like people slamming doors in my face, what can I say?"

"YOU CAN LEAVE."

Hermione stood there, with her arms crossed, and then she took a look around. "Wow... I love what you've done with the place."

She was torturing him, turning him about. She had her snobby tone and everything - arms crossed, full of sarcasm and contempt. And amidst that, he heard something else in her voice - awkwardness. Her words were forced, and his little crying bout could be heard ringing in her head as loud as if it happening again. It all drove him absolutely mad. The monumental amount of stress from the afternoon washed over him again, and he clenched his teeth, not bothering to get up.

"You need furniture. Desperately." _I need you to leave... desperately._

His arms found their way around his head, and he didn't even notice that his face was on the floor, probably shoved right in one of his dusty shoe prints; his elbow had snagged on a nail. Stupid hardwood flooring.

"Are... are you okay?"

"Do I look okay?" came his muffled reply.

"Did I hurt you?"

He hesitated. "Yes, you did."

His meaning wasn't lost on her. "Listen," she said after a minute. "I came here to ask you... if you wanted to go to dinner."

_Oh, wow. Is she fucking serious? Really? Really, now._ "I'm not allowed," he muttered, leaving everything else he wanted to say hanging in the air.

_Okay, that wasn't... exactly... a no._ "You are where we're going."

There was silence. All he really wanted was for her to go away.

"Come on, I'm buying. You must be starving; Ron said you didn't take a lunch today."

He was aware of everything, and everything about her was stressing him out more than ever. Her voice, her intentions, the sound of her breathing, the soft grip of her hand on his upper arm, her long, feminine fingernails. The fact that she was _concerned_. The fact that she was, technically, asking him out on a date. The fact that she didn't, and would never, see it that way. And the fact that Weasley had told her that he hadn't eaten all day - Weasley actually noticed? ... But instead of making him angry, everything just made him feel _so_ tired. It took him a few seconds to realize that she was trying to pull him up, and was struggling.

She let go of his arm as she felt his muscles flex underneath his skin. He rose to his feet painfully. She held out her other hand, where a small, wooden figurine rested on a handful of cloth.

A portkey. She'd planned for this. Well.

The implications made him dizzy.

He lazily reached out his hand and touched the little statue, and everything around him spun.

As he closed his eyes, he didn't know if it was the world or his own head that was spinning.


	8. Parachute

**Chapter** **Eight: Parachute**

It was a privately owned restaurant called _Parachute._ It was very warm inside, which was new to him - most of the restaurants he'd gone to had been ice cold on the inside. But then again, most of the restaurants he'd gone to were huge, expensive, and dark. This one was small, cozy, and warmly lit.

_"Parachute"? As if I need any additions to my headache._

"So... here we are. Do you have a headache or something?" Hermione asked him, real concern in her eyes.

He gave her a fierce look.

The hostess looked back and forth between them before saying brightly, "Hermione... and...?"

"Draco Malfoy," Hermione said, looking at her. "Oh, hello, Nina. I'd forgotten that school was out - I expected your sister."

"Nope, it's me," Nina said, looking more closely at Draco. "Well, let me get you a table. Follow me."

_Really, there's no need for a hostess in a place this small_, Draco thought. In reality, he found the girl to be extremely unhelpful to his current state.

Hermione cleared her throat as she opened her menu. Draco stared. She set it down when she noticed - he had the most acusing look on his face, as if he thought she was wasting his time or - trying to distract him. His gaze was making her uncomfortable, and the afternoon was hanging between them, eating up all the air.

"Lovely spot," Draco said quietly. He didn't relinquish his stare.

Hermione immediately regretted taking him. _This is so awful and awkward, why did I go through with this?_ Hermione had made the plans that morning... but then that afternoon had happened. This meeting was designed to get him in a more laid back setting, and get him to talk to her as if she were any other person and not just Hermione Granger. If she was going to keep her head and not let him get to her, she was going to need to be forward. Be the therapist. _I should have just given the portkey away... who would have found out? The Ministry has better things to do._

_And why am I trying so hard for_ him _anyway?_

"So... let's talk about something. How is your job going?"

Silence.

Hermione nodded slowly, cutting her losses. "Okay then. Ron said that you aren't nearly as bad to work with as he'd thought you'd be."

"Do you actually expect me to talk to you right now?" Draco asked her stonily, still staring.

Hermione sighed and looked down. "We don't have to talk about that if you don't want to."

Well, she could do _that_ much for him.

She hesitated before saying, "It's okay, you know - "

He held up his hand to silence her, closing his eyes briefly. Pain was clearly written on his face.

"Hi... my name is Derek... I'll be your server for this evening..."

"Waters," Hermione said without looking at him.

"Right, coming right up..."

"Take your time."

_Poor kid_. "You know it isn't okay."

She wished he would stop _staring_ at her like that. "You are the only one who is making it not okay, Draco. People do it all the time. I was just... surprised, is all."

He raised an eyebrow at her.

_His eyes look really droopy... I wonder if he abused those sleeping pills. I definitely gave him the motivation today._

"You know that it was for your own good." _You have been emotionally unstable for a while. You needed release._

Draco finally looked away, nodding. "Sure, okay. Then why do I feel like shit?"

"It's just a phase. When you let your guard go, it hurts, especially when you are hurting anyway. You feel extremely vulnerable. You feel like anyone could just come along... and squish you flat. And the hard part about that fact is that you can't will yourself to care."

He hesitated, then nodded. She had it spot on this time.

"Now. Do you remember what I told you in one of our earlier meetings? I said that you need to forget who I am and who you are, and look at things the way they are. The way they are, minus the fact that we were enemies for the longest time. Because I know that you haven't gotten over that fact yet."

Derek silently set their waters down, looked between them, and backed away slowly.

"Neither have you."

Hermione cocked her head to the side and looked away, raising her eyebrows in recognition. "It's... taken some time. But I'm overcoming it. It took a _lot_ of willpower to get me over to your flat today." He couldn't even begin to understand how hard that must of been... for her at least. He knew she wasn't as much of a beast as he'd like to think she was. "But I did it... because I wouldn't let myself back down. I had already planned for this... but I realized that it was an excellent opportunity to sew you up." She lowered her voice, leaning across the table. "And I wasn't about to leave you like that."

Draco kept looking into her eyes, and he knew that she was serious, and was putting herself, as a person, on the line. Why did she care that much? He was a monumental prick and in ignorant one to boot - but she had _still_ found it in herself to come over and make it up to him.

Draco wanted so many things. He wanted to storm at her, but he couldn't find the energy. He wanted to shake her, but his arms wouldn't move. He wanted to suffocate himself, but he couldn't stop his quickened breathing.

He was empty. The fact that she was muggleborn - a thing he hadn't thought of in a while - didn't make sense to him anymore. He couldn't even see that aura. Her hair, a constant point fit for disgusted expressions and torment, didn't look so out of place. He didn't notice it at all. And the one thing he hated the most - her guarded looks, her huffiness and goodiness, her constant prying, and everything she did to hide her true self from him and everyone else - didn't drill into him like it should have. He couldn't make himself angry.

Because despite all of the mess he'd put her through, she still had decency. He was beginning to understand that. And suddendly, that was all that mattered about her.

His eyes widened of their own accord. "Whoa," he whispered.

Hermione saw it in his eyes - she saw the spark. _Did he just... did he just wake up?_

A minute passed - they were frozen in time. She stared at him in astonishment; he looked down at the tabletop, eyes wide.

"... Are you ready to order?"

* * *

"What was it like?" Hermione asked, twirling her quill between her fingers.

"It was hard - definitely hard. We were constantly moving, constantly hiding. A person could go mad in that environment. I think I did."

She nodded. She hadn't written a single note on her paper yet - she didn't need to. She was the happiest she'd ever been while in his presence - he was singing like a songbird today. He'd even laughed at one point. He looked - and came off - so differently when he was like this.

It was a miracle.

Hermione hesitated before asking her next question. She had made what she liked to call "small talk" before - asking him about his life, his specific experiences, and that sort of thing. The questions were designed to keep him talking, get him used to sharing himself. Now, she needed to go onto something a little tougher. "What is it... that makes you happy?"

Draco stared at her, the calm expression leaving his face to be replaced with a blank look. _What makes me happy..._ was there anything that made him happy?

"You don't have to answer right away. Just think about it. Knowing what makes you happy will be extremely important to living a fulfilling life. In the meantime, let me tell you what makes me happy."

She was actually going to share hersellf with him willingly? Draco squirmed for a more comfortable position.

"My happiness is a combination of my judgement and other people's judgement. I have always liked to think that I don't care what people see when they look at me, or what they say when I'm not around, but I do care. For the longest time, I cared too much. The first factor into my happiness is my own evaluation with what I am doing. Do I like what I'm doing? Am I proud of the effort I have put into it? Are good results yielded? Few people can accurately judge the results for themselves, which is where the second factor comes in - other people's evaluation. Does what I am doing yield positive feedback? Are people proud of what I am doing? Because if I feel that what I'm doing is good but other people don't agree, then I cannot be happy. Does that make sense?"

"But... all those years, all those people who'd roll their eyes when you'd shoot your hand up in class to show off how smart you were - if you knew that they would do that, give you that negative feedback, then why didn't you stop being such a bookworm?"

Hermione nodded and looked down, smiling. It had taken her a while to figure out that people _didn't_like that in a person. "Because they didn't matter that much to me, not truly; of course, I felt constantly outcasted and alone. But I liked being smart, I liked knowing things. Only my teachers, my friends, my family, and what they thought mattered, for the longest time. When I finally started to calm down my rush to answer questions, my rush to prove myself, everyone else came around. And I was complete.

"What you need to do is get something that you like to do and do a good job at it, put the right amount of effort into it. That is where you start. Without that, you have nothing. Think of all the people who were ridiculed for their ideas and their work - and yet they continued. Those people _knew_ that their work was good, and they also _knew_ that it was radical. But they were proud of it. So when people came at them with flaming torches, they just smiled to themselves and kept working.

"But if you know that you cannot judge for yourself, then you need other people to evaluate your work. Friends and family offering support make some of the happiest people alive. The most successful and celebrated politicians and writers were praised for their work, the work they spent so much time on and were so proud of. They became unhappy once they were no longer happy with their work. They became unhappy once they did not value the way that they lived. And lastly, they became unhappy when their support group diminished or turned on them."

Draco hesitated before asking, "So... doing this - helping crazy people like me... makes you happy?"

"I believe in what I'm doing. That alone makes me happy. My positive feedback definitely does not come in the form of my paycheck, or the constant yelling a lot of patients do... but rather, my patients' progress. When someone improves, it makes me very happy. Very few people are completely turned, completely 'cured,' but _everyone_ gets better. That is what allows me to wake up and come here with a smile."

"... Have I been cured? And is that why you are in such a good mood? I mean, you're talking to _me_, Draco Malfoy, pure-blood prat, about your personal life, and I know... you know... I could use it against you."

Was she really going to tell him this next part? It might send him right back to where he was. But then again, he'd know if she wasn't being honest. And that could just make him angry. She opted for a hyperbole just in case, so he wouldn't take her words _too_ seriously and let it go to his head.

"You are one-thousand percent better... but only to me. You still need to apply that everywhere."

Draco nodded. _Okay, fair enough_.

"In the meantime, could you tell me why you were so angry at me all the time?"

Draco looked at her squarely for a few seconds before saying flatly, "I've already told you."

Hermione stared at him with confusion, willing him to go on. Apparently, she needed to hear it from him _now_.

So he continued. "Everything about you just got on my nerves. But it was mostly because of the root of everything - the simple fact that you didn't want to be here. You didn't want to help me. You did everything because you had to, not because you wanted to. And what more could I ask for, being the way I was, and the way I always treated you and your friends? But when I realized that you really were trying to help, and that you wanted to... I just felt an emptiness where my anger used to be."

Hermione brought her whirling quill down to her paper: _Is capable of identifying the causes of his anger._ "And you realize _why_ I didn't want to help you?"

Draco thought for a second. _Another little test_. It was one test, however, that he didn't have to cheat on. "Because I was, and always have been, an ignorant prick."

_Understands his actions and himself clearly, past and present. Acceptance._ "And my last question for today - do you care about what you've done?"

Well, that was a hard one. A test, sure. But did he really care? He opted for the truth: "I don't know yet."

Hermione nodded, paused, and then wrote: _Start of the Change of Heart process._


	9. Inspiration

**Chapter Nine: Inspiration**

Hermione set down her work and rubbed her forehead. She had been working non-stop the entire afternoon.

Seeing the patients was the easy part of her job. The paperwork, contemplation, and all the stress was the hard part.

At least Malfoy wasn't giving her nearly as much trouble as he was before.

Her greatest concern was actually Pansy - the girl was becoming extremely suicidal, and suicidal patients had to be handled with delicate care. It was Hermione that had to make the call to St. Mungo's when Pansy hadn't shown up for her therapy session. And Hermione had been there to sign her in, fill out her paperwork...

_Sometimes I wonder,_ Hermione thought as she worked her way through a form.

Whenever a client of hers tried to commit suicide, her supervisor was automatically involved, and more paperwork was dropped on her desk. The Ministry wanted to know everything - _What was the last thing your client said to you? Was his/her temperment improving under your care? Did he/she have a stable diet?_

Hermione wanted to scream sometimes. Not only because of the extra work and the personal insult of having someone wanting to commit suicide rather than get better... but because she felt _so guilty,_ and _so responsible_. As if she was personally responsible, as if she had tried to _Avada_ them herself.

She felt a light touch on her shoulder, and turned to see Ron standing there cautiously. She softened her face and smiled. "Hello, Ron. How was work?"

Their relationship was still in its awkward stage, even though they had been dating openly for over a year. That had definitely driven Harry crazy after a while - he was the one that put them up to it. "My _god_, you two are unbelievable! She loves you. You love her. Just _go out already_."

There was nothing passionate about them - it's like they were still just friends. They hadn't done anything together - no making out. No sex. Nothing... except for this upcoming wedding, which was _another_ thing Hermione had to worry about.

On some level, it was like marrying Harry. Though that would be... just weird. He was like her brother. And not only that - Harry and Ginny were a very passionate couple. Openly passionate.

It was a good thing she still had a crush on Ron, even if it was diminished occasionally by his personality.

"It was okay..." he said, sitting on their bed behind him. "The most interesting thing that happened was that we got a shippment of prophecies, and one of them has something to do with Luna's future daughter. She's supposed to come along in thirty years or something."

Hermione spun around to look at him. Luna kept her private life - if she had one - to herself, but as far as she knew, Luna was as alone as she ever was. "What are the details?" Hermione asked.

Ron shrugged and lied down on his back. "It was a big deal though - it couldn't even be placed in the room with the rest of them. It's top secret."

Hermione stared. "But... even Harry's prophecy was in the same room - "

"Yeah, that's the mysterious thing. The guy who delivered it said that the Minister had a signed order to place it separately. And I read the order... and it looks like - "

"Hey, guys." Harry Potter popped out of nowhere.

Hermione jumped.

"We were just talking about you," said Ron, looking over at him, completely unfazed. Living with Fred and George had probably done that to him.

"I came over here to explain that. Now, you can't tell _anyone_ about this..."

* * *

"Looking back now, how do you feel about all of it?"

Draco shrugged. "I don't know... I feel like I shouldn't have done all of that stuff."

Hermione wrote a note: _Starting to show remorse._ She looked at him, willing him to continue, though she wasn't paying one hundred percent attention to his words.

"I know that it was bad. In fact, I knew it was bad while I was doing it... a little. But I wanted to do it too much because I _hated_ him. I hated all of them. And nothing else mattered." He looked over at her to discover her eyes completely glazed over.

"What? Oh my god, I'm sorry about that. Oh boy." She shuffled the papers on her desk and closed his file.

Instead of getting angry, Draco stared at her and said, "What was that?"

She looked at him. She couldn't get what Harry had told her out of her mind. She knew what she needed to do - she needed to research, which was what she did best -

"Is it about that prophecy that came in the other day?"

Hermione looked at him, hesitated, and nodded.

Draco shook his head. "Don't worry about it, I'm already looking into it - Weasley's idea. You didn't get me that NASROP stuff for nothing."

"You're using it? That's great!"

"Of course I'm using it, I love going there. You should see the inside of it, Granger - it's beautiful. There are just stacks of papers and books everywhere, extending into oblivion... well, it needs a better organization system, that's for sure..." He trailed off, and then cleared his throat. "Well. The prophecy thing is not as big as it sounds. What did he tell you?"

"He said that its about something bigger than The Dark Lord! He's had people analyzing the words for at least a month, and brought it to the Minister's attention a couple days ago. None of them can figure out what it's saying...and there is still a chance that it isn't real. But just in case."

"Let me guess... Potter told the Minister that it needed to be locked away _just in case_ too, right? He's paranoid. The young girl who _made _the prophecy lives in a muggle sanatorium."

Hermione's eyes widened. "... Oh. Well, then." She shook her head. "Maybe it's nothing..."

"Are we _so starved_ of things to talk about that we talk about stuff like this? Come now. I'm researching it as a favor, and because it gets me out of that stupid apartment..."

"Well, you only have a few months left on your house arrest - "

"A few months? That's forever for me, Granger! And eight months is _not_ a few. At least the prophecy gives me _something_ to do. I could recite Roman emperors in my sleep."

She shrugged and looked at the clock on the wall. Nearly time for her next patient. "Listen, I have a bit of an assignment for you."

He looked at her with interest.

"I want you to pretend that you are me. I'm sure you've heard my voice in your head more than once, telling you not to do something - my patients complain about it all the time. They say I'm like some kind of... annoying guide fairy." She chuckled, but he didn't find that funny at all.

He _had_ heard her voice in his head - more times than he would've liked. And it had annoyed him to no end. She had _no idea_.

"Now, pretending you are me, I want you to take a significant event in your life - something that we haven't talked about - and I want you to rip it apart with questions. 'Why did this happen?' 'Why didn't I do the right thing here?' 'What was I thinking?' And I want you to write it all down. It better be good, too - " she shot him a warning look, " - because I'll make you redo it if it isn't. You know I will." She let that threat hang in the air, and then continued. "You are going to bring this paper into my office within the month. Take your time, because this will require a lot of thought. Okay?"

Draco was immediately annoyed. Homework? _No offense Granger, but school is out. For good. D'you fancy yourself a professor or something?_

"Well, if you don't have any questions, then we're all done here." She smiled warmly at him.

When he tried to return it the best he could, his smile came out as a simple bearing of his teeth. She laughed.

* * *

_This is so hard,_ Draco thought to himself. _I don't want to fucking do this._

He was sitting on his bed, with a fresh roll of parchment in front of him... and was stuck. He couldn't force himself to think of anything. What was a significant event in his life? There were a lot of events, and a lot of big ones... he had a hard time chosing. Big, or significant? "Big" was... something that affected everything in his life. But "significant"... required more thought.

_Okay, focus now. There are a million things that have happened to you. Pick one. How about the first time you rode a broom?_

He inhaled, put the quill to parchment...

Oooo. Granger was _not_ going to like that one.

All he had were dark memories, dark events... he couldn't think of anything that had made him happy. They'd discussed all of his escapades as a Death Eater... and a lot of his times as an ignorant prick of a student. All dark stuff. What was left? Nothing:

_When I got stamped with my Dark Mark. When I became seeker for the Slytherin Quidditch team. When I didn't kill Dumbledore. When I first met Crabbe and Goyle. When my father got sent to Azkaban. When I saw my mother cry for the first time. When I became a prefect. When I saw Azkaban looming in the distance. When I heard the charges against me. When they snapped my wand, when I first felt the cold fear from the dementors..._

He paused. What about everything after that? That was also a part of his life...

_When Potter first came to talk to me in my cell. When I heard the pleading tone in his voice as the Wizenagamot stared him down. When they removed my shackles._

_When I stepped into Granger's office._

_When I saw the splotch on her ceiling. When she made me cry. When she took me to dinner. When she gave me the essential ticket to getting into the NASROP Archives._

_When she said... that she couldn't leave me broken_.

He was struck with sudden inspiration. He wrote the last thought down at the top of the parchment, not knowing what to make of his choice.

_Very good,_ she whispered.


	10. Change

**Chapter Ten: Change**

Draco raked his fingers over his newly shortened hair. His head had never felt so light - heck, he had never felt so light, considering all the things he'd chopped off with his hair.

His entire stay in Azkaban, it had grown out. Not that he wasn't allowed to request a cut while he was there... he was just too out of it to notice or care.

His father had _always _wanted him to have long hair. Lucius Malfoy had it in his head that it made him look more masculine, or majestic, or something equally as ridiculous - for whatever reason. That was probably how Lucius had thought his own hair had made him look. In Draco's opinion... looking back... his father had looked pretty effeminate.

Not to mention he probably had split ends.

Draco chuckled to himself.

He was rather starting to enjoy this whole "treatment" process... it gave him plenty of opportunities to stroke his ego. Thinking he was actually funny definitely helped with that.

Hell, he'd noticed other changes as well - like he didn't have nearly as many suicidal and irrational cravings for overdosage on his sleeping pills, which he also needed to take less and less. That was probably something.

And for the cravings that did hit him, he had Granger's bushy head in his mind, giving him an ice cold, "don't even think about it" look that made his skin crawl. That girl was only a step down from a dementor when she wanted to be - she could bring back all kinds of lovely memories filled with torture, madness, and red slitted eyes in extremely vivid detail. And he already saw those things every time he closed his eyes.

No matter how much he dwelled on his past - those two and a half years in the coldest, darkest prison imaginable; another handful of years spent living in fear every second; all of the disapproving looks and constant torture of school, Potter, and his own family - he knew it was behind him. But he could not stop his mind from wandering back to those times... the times that had worn him so completely and unbearably thin. He could see, in his mind, the look of shock and revulsion on Potter's face when he'd first seen him in his cell, quivering in fear, covered with dirt, worn down to the bone with constant unhappiness and horror. Thank goodness the Ministry had had the decency to let him have a holding cell closer to humanity during the duration of the trial, because after that beacon of hope had shone through in Draco's life - albeit in the form of the legendary and oh-so-amazing Harry Potter (or "the cockroach" as Draco secretly called him) - there was no way he'd survive the torment of the dementors and his jail-mates. He'd suffocate himself first.

And when breathing was already hard... he could so easily run out of reasons why he shouldn't.

But Granger set him straight.

She'd let him know, right from the beginning, that all of his years of torment did not hide - or diminish - the fact that he had brought a lot of it on himself, and that if he had truly wanted to, he could have broken free of it all, and spared most of his grief. He'd already known that he was putting his own life down the crapper in a way. "Do this for him, Draco, and we will be rewarded immensely." Bullshit. Where were his bloody rewards now? They were _long_ overdo. _Bring him back to life for me - he owes me money!_

The disturbing thing about everything though was that it was _only_ Granger who could actually get through to him.

She was the only one that could get him to work based on the threat "or else." She was the only one to penetrate his mind. She was the only one for whom he'd answer character related questions truthfully. And she was definitely the only one who was truly helping him now. He could see that much.

Annoying as she still was.

He tried to think of why he'd been so angry at her for the longest time... her countenance when she was around him then was so unbearably infuriating. Plus, that light inside her definitely made her extremely attentive - that light she _masked_. It was torturous.

But now, he thought he knew why he'd yelled, screamed, and tore around her little room - it was because of the things that made her his perfect solution.

Nobody likes to have his ego stepped on. Nobody likes to be reminded of how worthless he really is. Nobody likes, after all the torture, pain, and madness, to have an infuriating, know-it-all turd wrinkle her nose and give him more wonderful reasons to just end everything. But it was apparently exactly what the doctor ordered.

Not to mention that he felt a tad guilty about being so difficult in the beginning. Although the opportunity to grill him must have felt like an early Christmas for her, dealing with his shit every day did not sound at all appealing. She had hated his guts after all.

_If I can redeem myself in her eyes, then I know I've made it._

Looking in the mirror one last time before donning his robe, he briefly skimmed his hand over his new freedom.

* * *

_Okay, "one thousand percent" was definitely way beyond an exaggeration, because he's still a prat. But as long as he thinks that he is making progress, I can dangle the carrot until he's gone as far as he will go._

Hermione wrote these things down as she thought. The three sections of her job were to listen, think, and administer the things necessary to to change a person's life. The listening showed her patient that she cared about what they had to say, while simultaneously giving her insight into their mind and heart. For some patients, listening is _all_ they wanted, and when that came, she happily gave them her time. The thinking was more for herself, to better understand her patients motives. After she thought that through, she thought of the solutions... and she administered her "cure." What made Hermione very good at what she did was the intensity she put into her patients, and the lengths she was willing to go to get the smallest fragment of understanding out of them. That was the only thing she _could_ do, because she understood that a lot of these people just needed someone who really cared, and who could show them that there was still good left in the world.

Not that doing all that with Malfoy, of all people, didn't make her a little nauseous... but she took her job seriously enough to get over that. Plus, he could be almost normal when he wanted to be, and it was her job to make him as normal as possible, as much of the time as possible.

She thought of the way he'd looked when he'd first stepped into her office and he had asked her - quite understandably - what she was doing there. Or more accurately, why she wasn't a Hogwarts professor, or the Minister of Magic or something. He'd looked so incredibly... physically vulnerable. She'd definitely been surprised to see him that way, although it didn't diminish the tartness of their first meeting. It was a good thing that he had a little meat on his bones now-a-days... otherwise she'd be writing more prescriptions.

Of course, though he'd been physically in bad shape, he'd still had the nerve to belittle her in her own office - like they were back in school or something, a pair of squabbling thirteen year olds! - and not even face the fact that he would be admitting numerous things in her office that he would never even admit to himself on his own.

He was, after all, _such_ a bloody coward.

Anything he _had_ told her before was to save his own skin - because she would report him if he put her through months of torture and told her basically nothing. At least now, he wanted to change.

Hermione shook her head as she cleared these thoughts away. Well, she had given him an assignment - she would see if he was taking it seriously. He had given her one of his glares when she had assigned it to him - like she was giving him busywork or something. _This_ was definitely not busywork. It was important. It was his first assigned task to look at things from her perspective while targeting a specific event. Or in other words, she was forcing him to think like a rational, functioning, _good_ person. He was probably going to spontaneously burst into flames.

Some part of her knew, though, that he would come through. She couldn't be sure of the job he would do - his behavior was still erratic - but she felt like he would definitely put some thought into it.

* * *

"You look particularly sour this morning," Ron Weasley assessed, sitting down next to Draco. They were in one of the Ministry's many dining halls.

Draco meerly grunted and tossed back another swig of pumpkin juice. As much as Draco did not want to admit it, Ron was actually starting to grow on him. They had many of the same interests, he'd discovered (minus the intellectual ones) and Ron's insults were not so much scathing as they were playful. Not to mention he got to hear a bit about Granger while Ron talked sometimes.

Not that that was a reason to talk to him - _at all_.

"Did you hear about that prophecy? The Minister wants it buried. Apparently, someone leaked it over to Luna and she didn't take it very well. She thought it was a tremendous joke, which is saying something, coming from her." Ron pulled his plate towards him and started munching on his oversized lunch.

Draco nodded - he knew Loony Lovegood's assessment was accurate, just based on her reputation. He and his schoolmates had not been kind to her at all - she'd practically invited torment. "Did you still want me to look into it? Because I've found some evidence that might help prove the prophecy's worth."

Ron thought for a moment, remembering that he was Draco's boss, before saying, "You can if you want. You must be bored as hell anyways."

Draco nodded in recognition and downed the last of his drink. He did love his pumpkin juice. It was a sin against humanity that he couldn't have it while he was locked away. "Any information on who leaked it?" he asked, watching his glass refill itself.

Ron shrugged, chewing. Draco frowned at him, and then at his enormous plate. _Man, that guy eats a lot. What a pig!_

"Piggy," Draco said after a moment, moving on to his sandwich.

Ron nearly choked with laughter, much to Draco's annoyance. _Piggy?_ "Git," Ron responded around his mouthful. When he realized it came out sounding like "shit," he started to chuckle again against his will.

Draco was laughing now as well. "Men of great words, aren't we?"

Just six months before, that would have looked like the strangest sight in the world.

* * *

"Wow. I like the new haircut, Draco." Hermione eyed his five centimeters of hair.

"Thanks. I cut it myself."

"Oh, so that's why there's a little bald spot on the left side?"

Draco stiffened, glaring at her, but she just smiled and waved her hand at him. "I was just kidding. Learn to take a joke."

He sat down, dropping his scowl, and waited for her to start. Hey, she was right. If he could lighten up with Weasley, as he had done the previous day, then he could try to lighten up a bit with her.

Hermione was still looking at his head, with that therapist look on her face. She then took up her quill and made a note on her paper: _Is willingly starting to shed his old self, starting with appearance._

"What was that?" Draco asked, a little annoyed.

"Well, to a therapist, a haircut or a new hairstyle is the telltale sign of a person trying to change. A person looks at himself or herself in the mirror and says, 'I want to try something new.' That thought is what starts every other change."

Draco nodded in understanding, letting a small smirk come over his features. "Well, I just didn't like my split ends, truthfully - "

Hermione tossed a quill at him, which he dodged mirthfully.

She chuckled briefly before getting down to business. "Now. Have you made any moves toward happiness?"

Draco thought for a moment before saying, "I'm still working on that prophecy thing, even though the official research was terminated by the Minister. It gives me something to do - plus, I'm learning some really fascinating things during my research."

Hermione nodded, writing. "Do you find any trouble making it to Poland?"

"I filled out the portkey forms for a repeating portkey - always at 6:00 during the week, backfiring me home at 9:00 to make my 9:30 curfew. That gives me at least two and a half hours. Weekends, I stay home with my notes."

Hermione made a note: _Starting path to happiness. Putting self on positive schedule._ "And does this schedule of yours keep your thoughts more on your work than on your past?"

Draco nodded.

She made another note. "Well then... are you still having trouble sleeping?"

"Sometimes - I'm still having nightmares. If I can't sleep at all, I try to fall asleep myself before I resort to the pills. I'm still on my second bottle."

"And have you abused them?"

Draco shuffled in his chair. "Twice." Here it came - the flood, the tidal wave to knock him around.

Hermione looked at him sternly. "If you are having problems, you need to force yourself to look at it and know that it is you, the way you are, the way you were. You cannot change it. Realize that it was your past, and that it is all - "

"Can you be _any_ more vague sounding?" Draco laughed.

Had that been the second time he'd laughed today? Hermione stared at him before making a note: _Beginning to find humor in life._ She smiled at her notepad. "I get that a lot," she murmured. "Well. If you have any bouts of sadness or anger, don't hesitate to owl me. You know my address."

Draco was about to say, "Why would I know that?" before Hermione pointed to the little sign on her desk: _Hermione Granger, 1346 Huntsford Street, 31st District, Lancaster, England._

"You live in a wizard district?"

Hermione eyed him. "Why wouldn't I?"

He shrugged. "I just thought... you know, with you and Weasley, that you'd live in his little... shack thing."

Hermione ignored the insult and said, "One thing you should know about me, Malfoy, is that I'm very independent. Now, how about you tell me a bit about your research?"


	11. Intentions

**Chapter Eleven: Intentions**

Draco leafed through his notes idly. He'd been doing a lot of research, and each clue sent him further and further into the books. He'd eventually opened up a world of magic that he had never known existed.

Doing this was like treasure hunting in a room full of gold - all of it was brilliant and fantastic, but what he wanted would take him even further. And that fact was so easy to forget when there were a million other fascinating things within the same pages.

He'd realized sometime between lugging around large, ancient volumes and sticking his quill behind his ear that he was acting just like Hermione used to. It was a startling realization. She'd had buck teeth for a while there, crazy hair, and was annoying - but in reality, he should never have tormented her based on her love of books and knowledge. Because he was becoming exactly the same way.

Well, Hermione was the girl that would put her ear next to a new book as she opened it just to hear the spine crack - a noise that would make her shiver with delight. And she'd also used to smell books - she'd go on about how good quality books smelled like unsalted pretzels.

He wasn't _that_... obsessed.

While she was a "read or die" kind of girl, he was the kind of guy that picked up a good book and would never underestimate what it could teach him. It should have forced him to take some of his coursework more seriously... and maybe should have made him go back to finish at Hogwarts.

But anyway.

Reading was the one thing he could concentrate on and not let his mind wander. Of course, if he was reading a book about death or souls or something like that, or if death was mentioned in a book, he might occasionally get sidetracked on his increased heart rate and shortness of breath... but that usually didn't happen. It was really too bad that the further he got into his research, the more he was finding that type of material.

The future did not look pretty for poor Luna's daughter - but since the prophecy was bogus anyway (and it was a good thing, too) it at least wouldn't come true.

Plus, he'd found something very disturbing about soulmates during his research:

_One powerful magical connection is the magical bond between soulmates. All cultures have some form of the term "soulmate" - some have described it as love at first sight, and other cultures have described it as a divine union between two people on Earth, or a union eternally blessed by a higher power. This connection is said to be one of the most powerful magical connections, stemming from both the power of pure emotional magic and the strength of the physical connection. Soulmates who find each other and give in to the connection have joined souls. It is an enlightening experience - a person will feel as though their soulmate is the lone human being with significant thoughts and emotions in a sea of clones._

_The awareness that these people have for each other is distinctly of the emotional magic form - no outside magic can change this connection, though a physical connection strengthens it. Although many attempts have been made at duplicating the soulmate connection with potions and chants, this form of magic has never been successfully recreated. Many attempts have also failed at manipulating this connection, and especially by the people whom it affects._

_There is no specific soulmate for every person living at a time; a person can have hundreds of possible soulmates. Every soul resembles a piece of a two part puzzle in this way, and when two people find an exact match among many possibilities and engage themselves with that other person, the pieces of the puzzle snap together, and the souls are joined._

_Typical reactions to this connection include confusion and an inability to forget the soulmate after a relationship has ended. Also, seeing a single person that stands out among many as being different in an almost unexplainable way is another symptom - victims have said that their soulmates possessed an "internal light" that they felt drawn to, and could not tear themselves away from._

Draco had looked up in alarm after reading that bit.

It was like reading his own death written out on a bit of parchment, set to take place at his ten o'clock appointment the next day. It was the kind of finding that could only be swallowed with Valium or some brandy. He'd been afraid to keep reading, and definitely did not like the next sentence:

_Those with deceased soulmates find themselves wandering in a twisting abyss of dispair, and are usually never complete again from the loss, as if the deceased soumate had torn the other's soul._

Draco put his hand to his heart as it sped up.

Was he reading what he thought he was reading?

* * *

"Is something wrong, Draco?"

He wanted to be anywhere other than there. He wanted to be back in the Hall of Prophecy, filling in rows 223 through 246. He wanted to sort through old documents and written records. He wanted to read primary sources and take notes.

He did _not_ want to be staring at the object of his thoughts - and within those thoughts, perhaps the object of something way more complicated.

He waved his hand and pulled his face together. He hadn't spent two years in Azkaban and come out without an idea of how to do _that_.

"It's nothing. I just found something the other day that - "

"Well, share it. It might help to get it off your mind."

His eyes widened a bit. "I don't think you want to know this, Granger," he said, panicking.

"How bad could it be?" she said, not unaware of his how much he wanted to hide it.

Draco looked at her. "Oh, it's pretty bad. Or... it could be pretty bad, depending on your reaction, and... what you think of me."

Hermione was getting worried - he was getting too cryptic. "Does it concern your safety? Because if so, you _do_ have an obligation to let me know."

He stared into her concern filled eyes for a few seconds before forcing himself to calm down. "I don't want to share it right now." His own eyes screamed for her to concede.

Hermione saw the pleading look. "Okay. We can talk about it later. So... besides that... how is your path to happiness going?"

"It's getting harder. I'm having nightmares still."

Hermione nodded and took out her quill: _Happiness: starting to hit hurdles. 1) Nightmares._ "What other kind of difficulties are you having?"

Draco shook his head and looked at the ceiling, a thing he hadn't done in a week or two. That splotch... looked completely like Crabbe today - his dead friend. "Um," he said, getting control of his voice. "I think... I'm starting to fear death."

Hermione made no move on her quill at this admission.

"It's just... when I'm eating, or when I'm doing something, I'll wander off... and when I think of it in detail, sometimes I... spaz. I have a spaz attack."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Is that what you were thinking of when you came in here?"

"Not exactly, no." He searched her face for her reaction - she had the distinct therapist look on her face, but behind it - he saw something else.

"Define 'spaz attack.'"

"Well, I just... I don't know. I feel like I have to physically brush it all away. Beat it up. Kick its arse, so that it'll leave me alone. I can't always control the spazzing. And then sometimes... it's like Death takes over my body and tries to pull my heart out of my chest."

Hermione nodded slowly, searching his face. He stared at her uncertainly.

"I mean, I can't even read about it in my research without getting all..."

"... flustered," she finished for him. He nodded admittedly.

"Well, considering your history... I mean, everyone you've known has gone. Family, friends... even enemies. It all takes its toll."

He nodded. It was creeping up on him, and he didn't want to start flailing around in her office. He fell his heart speed up.

"Listen - if these are real panic attacks, and you completely lose your ability to control them, then I may have to give you something for them. For a patient like you, it is definitely a last resort. But if you truly believe that they are bad enough, then I can give you the relief. Or... you can just owl me. I'm always available to talk, as I've said. Now, let's talk about something a little less traumatic. How is your little assignment going?"

If that is what she called "less traumatic," then she needed to be the one on the couch. Draco realized, then, just how much harder his assignment was going to be.

* * *

_Actions remain in bass, but intentions in treble clef._

She had heard that in a song once, and felt that there was no better situation than this one to apply it to.

He was trying to get better, wasn't he? That was all that she wanted now. And he was making progress.

So then why was she crying?

She'd known that he'd had a terrible existence. He was twenty years old, and had suffered for most of those twenty years. So? It had made him a prat, and he could have changed it. He'd had plenty of opportunities.

And yet he was trying so hard now - she'd seen that today. Just... that _look _on his face. It reminded her distinctly of someone she knew:

Harry Potter.

"I just... I don't know what's wrong with me, Harry. He just looked so helpless."

Harry nodded, rubbing her shoulders. "It's okay. If he can inspire this in you, I can take it that he's making some really big changes. And that's great."

"God, he looked so much like you did a moment there - that frustration and the agony... the tiredness from everything..."

Harry nodded. He remembered that very well - in fact, Malfoy had been a big part of that, back in fifth year. "Well... I can probably relate then."

Hermione pushed her face into his robes, distantly hoping that her hair wasn't in his face. "He's such a prat though."

Harry shushed her and rocked her back and forth. So Malfoy was getting to her? For some reason, it didn't seem that strange to him. Of course Malfoy would start to change if she was his counselor - he knew just how seriously Hermione took her job and how much she went through in order to get her patients to change. She was probably one of the best counselors there was in that little office. He considered the possibility that Malfoy - known for his tricks - could possibly be pretending... but he dismissed that thought. The Malfoy he knew would have done that just to spring up in the end and say, "Guess what, I haven't changed one bit." But the new Malfoy, the one that had been through Azkaban and living with Death Eaters... probably wanted to change in order to put all of that behind him.

So... Harry could kind of see it.

"He'll always be a prat, Hermione... it's one of those things you can't change about him. You can change his ideas though."

Hermione nodded. She was going to have to put more force into that.

Tomorrow, she was going to do the blood exercise.

* * *

Draco looked over his sheet. He knew that he was possibly taking the assignment too far; and possibly, he wasn't taking it far enough.

What did the information he had read about that morning have to do with the assignment, anyway? It was covering two completely different topics.

Well... not exactly. They were both about the same person. That made the intentions behind his choice a little more fuzzy.

_Okay. You don't know that the soulmate thing was talking about her, anyway._What was it that was making him fuzzy anyway? Was it the possibility that she was his soulmate? Yes, _that_ was what was making him flustered. Not... her. Not any kind of hope that she wouldn't react badly to that information. And certainly not any kind of hope that when she'd said that she "couldn't leave him like that"... she'd really meant it, past the fact that she was a good person and cared about his well-being as a patient.

Certainly not that she couldn't leave him like that because she cared about _him_, in her heart.

Who could care about _him_?


	12. Dirtiness

**Chapter Twelve: Dirtiness**

"Sit down Malfoy. There is something I would like to show you today."

Draco eyed the bowl, cauldron, and knife on her desk, along with what looked like a few jars of potion ingredients._ Let's see if I can figure out what potion she is making..._

"So, Draco. For as long as you can remember, you've had people telling you how 'filthy' muggleborns are. Is that correct?"

Draco paled. What was she talking about? He looked at the knife on her desktop. "Yes."

"I thought as much. Today, I wanted to show you something about muggleborns, and about blood." She brought her wand out and set it next to her notepad, and then started unscrewing jars.

_Let's see... that looks like troll beettle wings... toad venom... and... diluted panacea sap -_

Oh no.

It was a simple but special kind of healing potion designed to quell sickness. And combined with magical human blood, it could create a potion designed to induce a dreamless sleep.

Draco gulped as she started to create her potion. "Um... you aren't going to cut yourself with that knife, are you?" To tell the truth, blood - any kind of blood - made him queasy. Just the smell of it - that metallic smell, and the aftertaste of salt in his mouth as he breathed it in... he felt dizzy after being exposed to it.

Hermione was silent as she mixed the potion with her wand, waving it over the surface. She then added a measured amount of the diluted panacea sap and set her wand back on the table. If Draco remembered correctly, that potion had to sit for a few minutes before anything else was added.

"Well.. this has to sit for a bit. Tell me how your assignment is going."

"I can't... deal with coming here every day and you asking me how it's going. It makes it harder to do."

"Get used to pressure Draco. You'll deal with it for the rest of your life."

"I know what pressure is!" he snapped.

Hermione looked at him before turning back to her potion. "Well, then I suppose I can do this now." She took the knife and held it to her arm.

Draco gasped involuntarily. It was quite a strange sight, and a disturbing one as well. He felt like he was watching her calm, collected suicide; sitting at her desk, calmly taking out a knife to kill herself, humming a little catchy tune... his thoughts rushed back to that sentence he'd read about deceased soulmates.

"What? I want to show you something." She made a cut all the way across her arm, letting it bleed freely into the bowl.

Draco watched in horror.

"Don't worry, it doesn't hurt - it's like cutting meat open. I'm pumped full of pain killing potion," she said, eyeing his horrorstruck expression. "Though perhaps it would make a bigger impression on you if I let you know that it _does_ hurt, that I am hurting _myself _in order to get you to understand something." She took a towel from inside her desk and wiped her arm before putting her wand to her skin and mending the incision. He looked at the bowl - it had at least two cups of blood in it. He could smell it.

"Come here," she commanded. He stood up and hesitated.

"Closer," she said, leaning over the bowl. He took a step forward and peered into it.

"Give me your hand," she said a little more softly. "Come on, I won't bite."

Her smile did not fool him in the slightest. What was she doing? "What are you going to do with my hand?"

She rolled her eyes. "Just give me your bloody hand, it's not like I'm going to cut it open too." He stiffened and looked at the door as Hermione took his hand and brought it next to the bowl. He turned to watch her nervously.

"Now. Did you or did you not see me pour my own blood into the bowl?"

The image of her bleeding arm, her calm face, and the bloody knife was still unbelievably fresh. "Yeah." He glanced at the knife - it still had wet and splotchy bright redness on it.

For the first time, he looked at her desk - it looked like a crime scene.

"So - there it is then. Take a look at it."

"At what?"

"The blood in the bowl."

He looked. The sides of the bowl were dripping with it, and the bowl itself was a bright white that looked like it should never have housed something so sinister; the blood was bright red and opaque - and from this close, was making him faint. It took him a second to realize that she was rubbing circles in his palm. It was clearing his head a bit... and yet making it fuzzier.

"What does it look like? Does it look dirty to you?"

It hit him then. Of course that was what she was showing him - why else would she cut herself open like that? He shook his head, feeling a strange feeling in his stomach - a combination of bile and something like... contrition.

Without warning, she put his hand right in the bowl. He yelped in surprise and tried to get his hand back - she had a firm grip on it.

"What does it feel like? Describe it to me. Viscosity, temperature... everything." He felt her thumb still moving over his palm, a strangely rough surface amidst all the smoothness in the bowl.

He felt distinctly sick then. Even as his time as a Death Eater, blood was not something he saw very often. The Unforgivables were not only the worst curses... but they also tended to be the cleanest ones. "It's... I don't know, Granger, this is really... weird."

She was entirely unfazed by his discomfort, which made him even more uncomfortable. Why was she acting like this? "Well... it's the wettest thing I've ever felt. And it's warm..." Hearing it come out of his mouth made him want to gag and vomit. She abruptly let go of his hand, and using her bloodied one, she reached in her desk and pulled out something wrapped in foil.

"Eat this," she said, holding up a piece of blood stained white chocolate.

He fainted on the spot.

When he awoke, the first thing he felt was her hand on his forehead. "I told you to eat it, Malfoy. You can drink a pint of blood before you get sick."

She left the bit of chocolate in his open, bloody hand and returned to her desk, letting him get up on his own.

"WHAT THE FUCK, GRANGER."

"You know, you say that to me all the time."

"SERIOUSLY."

He got to his feet and fell against the cushions behind him. He was suddenly freezing. He looked up groggily - her desk was clean, but the blood bowl was still there, along with the cauldron and a glass of water. "FUCK," he yelled, looking at his drippy hand.

"Hey, you were going on a pretty good clean language streak - don't screw it up by cursing up a storm now. And eat that, or I'll feed it to you along with some of your organs."

He was gagging again, but he shoved it in his mouth anyway.

"That's better. Now chew like a good boy."

He bit down, and his tongue touched the metallic wetness. He felt like crying, like he was five years old again and his mother was forcing him to eat something at dinner he didn't want to.

"Come on, it's bloody chocolate!"

"Ugh," he sounded around his mouthful. Why did she have to say "bloody" chocolate? He chewed it, and immediately felt his head clear up. His heart didn't however - it still felt like he had been kicked in the chest.

"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" She ignored his glare. "I bet if I opened your arm up, the same color blood would come out, am I right? Now, tell me why my blood is dirty, in detail. Because I am human just like you. I don't have any deformities, no tentacles under my robes, no extra toes or eyes hidden somewhere."

Draco stared at her, holding his hand out like it was covered in slime... which it kind of was, now, considering that he was simultaneously letting it air-dry. "I don't know, Granger," he muttered, his voice shaking.

Her fierce stare softened a bit. "Just think about that," she said, picking up the bowl and dumping the contents into the cauldron. It began to bubble uncontrollably. "I'm making this so that you can sleep better. The blood usage was just a bonus... though it'll probably do you more good than this potion will."

They sat in silence for a bit before Hermione remembered. "Oh, let me get your hand for you..." she came over toward him with her towel and glass of water.

She knelt next to him slowly, wetting her already blood-stained towel, and took his hand gently. Her now clean fingers pressed into his skin as the roughness of the towel worked on the drying redness. She twisted his fingers in her hand, rubbing the skin in between his fingers and on his knuckles. For some reason, the whole experience was starting to make him feel fuzzy again, and the silence between them became an awkward one. He searched for something to say.

"You know," he said, watching her face, "it's just an expression."

"Yes, just like the 'n' word is an expression?" she said sweetly, twisting his hand all she way around until something popped that was not supposed to. His eyes bulged as he bit his tongue. Something had told him that he shouldn't say it, that he should just keep his fat mouth shut...

"I bet you don't think saying _that_ is right, do you? Well, guess what, _racist_, it's the same fucking word for two different people." Tears leaked out of her eyes, and she let his hand go, throwing the bloody towel on his face as she went back to her desk; she then rounded on him with the most ferocious look on her face, ready to let him have it.

* * *

Draco stared at the large vial he was holding. She had given him the potion to take home in case he was having nightmares. It didn't even look like she had added a bowl of blood to it - the potion was a clear blue.

_Yow can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick_, she'd said. Well, wasn't there at least a pint of blood in that potion? And she expected him to drink it?

He scoffed and put it on his shelf. Today had definitely been the most disturbing day of his therapy - even more disturbing than their little dinner outing. When he should have felt disgusted for actually eating her blood because it was "dirty"... the thought of the actual method of consumption just made him sick to his stomach. He'd eaten her blood with a piece of fucking _chocolate_, for crying out loud. That was some evil sounding shit, like he was a dark vampire or something, laughing and popping some of his favorite candy.

Ugh.

And _Granger_. What was up with her today? She must have been quite a sociopath for doing all that just to prove a point. And proven it she had - he could distinctly still feel the blood swirling around his fingers as she held them there and rubbed his palm. It'd felt almost like... warm milk.

And even though he had been overcome with the smell of it... he could still feel the distinctly pure feeling of the blood, like... it had no infections. Perhaps it was a magical thing, or perhaps his brain had added that as he'd continued to think about it, but whatever the case was, he knew something.

"Dirtiness" had nothing to do with blood. It had nothing to do with heritage. And it certainly had nothing to do with magical ability.

It had everything to do with character.

Did that make him a mudblood now?

And then she'd just started screaming at him. Calling him names, ripping him apart. He had just... sat there, staring at her like she was some kind of wild animal that had gone crazy. He forced himself to not think about what she'd said, because then he'd be in danger of crying again.

Ugh. Why did he have to be so weak?

Draco lied down on his bed, trying to stop his brain from thinking.

* * *

_She was bleeding everywhere, from every hole in her body, and every cut and gash on her skin. Blood splashed on pristine white walls - the strangely familiar color white that should never have housed something as sinister as blood._

_"Go away," she said, turning away from him, blood still flowing down her body like she was a living waterfall. "I'm busy."_

_Draco watched in horror. He had something in his hand, something warm, something melty. He turned to look at the melting chocolate in his hand, and it suddenly began to spurt blood as well, with as much force as she. He was covered in redness - it was in his mouth and eyes, in his ears, shutting his brain off and killing his other senses. It became a living thing that was out to smother him, getting in every nook and cranny of his being, filling his lungs and his heart. He desperately reached up and tried to clear it out of his eyes, trying to see where she was, trying to see if she had died._

_"Very good," she whispered._

_He flailed around, trying to break free of all the redness that was blinding him, turning him about, and ripping at his core, but he was drowning in it. Drowning in her pretty, yummy red blood. He coughed, trying to get it out of his mouth, but no matter how much he fought, the red in front of his eyes eventually became darkness, and he felt the world slow down, as if time was stretching in order to let him relish in the feeling of his slow, torturous demise._

_"You're mine now," she whispered. "Let me hear you say it."_

_Draco started shaking as the blood around him, the blood inside him, and the blood filling the room turned ice cold. He was suddendly a thousand times alive again, flailing around, trying to clear the blood from his being._

_"Say it," she voiced. Draco looked around in vain, trying to find the source. It took him a few seconds to place that the voice was still inside him, coming out of every cell of blood around him and within him._

_"Say it," she breathed, millimeters from his heart and his mind, his lips, his chest, his brain. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out except for more blood._

_"SAY IT!" she screamed, chilling him past zero, past any temperature. The blood around him turned black._

_"Mud.. mud..." he whispered._

"Wake up, Draco, you're scaring me!" Hermione was shaking him. He twisted around and opened his eyes.

_"You're still alive?" he said, reaching out to her._

"Did you take that potion? I told you to take it!"

_"Where's all that blood? There was so much blood, everywhere, and you were gone, I couldn't see you - "_

"I'm right here, Draco, standing in front of you - you aren't dreaming anymore. You shouldn't leave your door unlocked - anyone could just waltz in - "

He was unconscious again.


	13. Healing

**Chapter Thirteen: Healing**

Paperwork.

Well, at least this time she wasn't signing in a suicide attempt - though in her position, she could classify it as one.

She tried not to think, and tried not to feel as she worked her way through the sheet. Name? Draco Malfoy. Age? 20. Sex? Male. Relation to patient? Therapist. Just another patient in St. Mungo's, just another day, right?

_Bloody idiot!_ she fumed, inking her quill. _I knew he'd have a nightmare after he passed out in my office, and he still didn't take it! I told him that he needed to take it tonight!_

"Hermione?" came a voice from behind her. She turned. It was her favorite nurse, the nurse that always ended up helping her patients when they landed themselves in there.

Or in other words, Parvati Patil.

"How's he doing?" Hermione asked, looking at the other girl. Parvati rolled her eyes.

"He's okay. I might have had the urge to run him through, but I didn't."

Hermione gave the girl a stern look, who shrugged.

"We did have a hard time waking him up, but we gave him some potion that should keep him from hallucinating for the next couple hours while we run tests. It hasn't kicked in yet though. After that, he should be fine. What did you do to him, anyway? I've never seen him so terrorized."

Hermione looked at her feet. "Our session today was a little rough." She lightened her expression, and changed the subject with a note of desperation. "How's the healer's training going?"

"Good... Malfoy is actually one of my first hands-on patients. I'll probably get my certification by the end of the year." She smiled widely. "Well... I better go check on the prat. He keeps going on about blood... he says he can smell it everywhere. I'll come back when he's ready to go."

Hermione thanked Parvati and sat back down, wondering how a girl like Parvati - whose favorite subject had been Divination, and who had never appeared to take her coursework seriously - had landed herself as a healer's assistant, and moved up from that to a nurse. And by the end of the year, she'd be a certified Healer! Hermione shook her head. Why wasn't her own life like that?

* * *

"Hey, Hermione."

"Ron! What are you doing here?"

Ron looked at her for a few seconds, taking in her frazzled appearance. She was wringing her hands together, and her eyes were dark. He sat slowly down in the chair next to her. "You didn't come home last night... and word is out that Malfoy went crazy, or something like that. I'd figured you'd be here."

Hermione looked at her watch - it was 4 A.M.. She didn't have a patient until 8:00... but she still felt panicky.

"I'm sorry about that, Ron." _'Word is out?' What does he mean by that?_ "Word is out?"

"Parvati's still the same gossip queen. I heard it from an owl sent by Neville."

At this early in the morning? Hermione tried to wrap her head around this new information. So now... everyone knew about Draco's... about his accident. He wasn't going to like that too much when he went into work.

"You said you'd gone to check on him. Apparently... for good reason. What happened anyway?"

Hermione fingered the edges of her shirt, keeping her voice even. "He had a really bad nightmare."

"And here I thought it was _serious_," Ron snorted, earning him a glare. "What?" he defended. "I have nightmares, and I don't check in here for that."

"Trust me, Ron, it wasn't just a nightmare. He was suffocating. Delirious. I revived him... and then he just... went out, cold. I've never seen anything like it. If I didn't know any better, I would have guessed it to be the work of a dark spell." Hermione looked down at her hands. "It was probably my fault. I put him through a lot today. It was like I'd never gotten over our past."

Ron put his arm around her shoulders. "You tore into him, didn't you?"

She nodded. "He said something... 'it's just an expression'... when I was doing the blood thing and making his nightmare potion, and it just woke up this... _beast_. I was cursing like a sailor... and then I just flat kicked him out. Literally. I'd seen the look on his face... that dead look he had when I'd last broken him down. That's why I went to check on him - who knows what he was doing, he was off work today. All that negative energy, all that darkness I was throwing at him... probably took root, waiting for a time to strike. For all I knew, he was hanging from his shower spout."

Hermione tried not to think about that.

"I would've liked to see that whole argument - " she gave him a dark look, " - if we were still in school." He smiled weakly.

She shook her head at him and looked away.

"You care, though."

She ignored that, studying her fingers. Ron looked away as well, and they sat in silence for a minute, listening to the distant screaming of someone on the other side of the building.

"Otherwise, you would have left him..." he continued hesitantly.

"Ron, I don't _leave _people. It's my obligation as his counselor to see that he is in his best condition. And besides, I wouldn't have been able to leave him if we were back in school and he were bleeding to death in the mud. Harry didn't - not after he saw him in Azkaban. It's just... not right. I couldn't live with that. And also... he's different now. He's shown me that he can be a regular person."

"So... you actually care about _him,_ then." Ron looked at her.

For whatever reason, his words almost felt like an accusation. Like he had worked for years and years in order to get her to love him... and Malfoy throws himself around her little office for a few months and she suddenly feels the need to care? She'd hated him, and that had taken only a month to wear off?

"Yes, I do. And I have no idea why."

That admission sat heavily between them.

She looked up as Parvati came over to them. The girl sighed heavily, flipping her long braid over her shoulder.

"Well, he's better. We had to transfer him down to Spell Damage so they could run some more tests, but they didn't find anything significant. In the meantime, he's as good as new physically, but he looks terrible otherwise. You've got some work to do on him yet, Hermione."

Hermione nodded, looking back at her feet. "I thought as much."

"Also, he'll be needing something for any future breakouts - "

"I gave him some potion, but he didn't take it."

Parvati nodded. "He told us that. If he needs something stronger, send him over to us and we'll give him something."

_Looking back on it now_, she thought, _something had probably gone wrong somewhere between me offering him a piece of chocolate covered in my blood and me dumping the blood into his potion_. She couldn't imagine what that must have been like - looking at the clear blue potion and thinking about how much blood was used to make it - the more blood, the stronger the potion. And he must have been thinking, _in order to have relief, I need to drink her blood._

That would have driven _her_ mad. And especially after she'd flipped out on him.

Suddenly, she couldn't think anymore.

He was standing there, at the end of the hallway, looking like a ghost in his white nightclothes, pale skin and blond hair. He was frail-looking, like a ghost, and haunting-looking, like a ghost.

Hermione became acutely aware of Ron standing beside her, watching her as Draco came slowly down the white corridor. He looked like he didn't know what to make of her standing there, with Ron, eyeing him.

Draco wanted to make her feel guilty - he wanted to blame everything on her. He wanted to tell her to go away, and that nothing could make up for what she had done today. But in all honesty, he hadn't expected to see her standing there, and hadn't expected to see Ron there with her - did that mean that they actually cared about him? Everything he was about to say - everything that he was feeling about telling her off just disappeared.

She was there, waiting for him. So was Ron. And they cared.

Or was Hermione there because she felt _obligated_ to visit him... and Ron just wanted to tell him off for being late to work?

He stood in front of them, ignoring the expression that Hermione was giving him. "What time is it?" he asked quietly.

"About 4:30," Ron said, looking at the large wall clock.

_At least I'm not late for work. So what is he doing here then?_

They all stared at each other for a good five seconds.

"Coming to see me wasn't all that necessary," he said to Ron.

Ron looked a little uncomfortable at this admission; he hadn't exactly come to see Draco. Hermione nudged him with her foot.

"Well... yeah, I know. We just wanted to see how you were doing. Hermione brought you here and everything - she's been here since at least midnight."

Draco nodded and forced himself to look at her. He had a strange urge to cry as he studied her expression. He couldn't place it exactly as a certain emotion - but he could read every ounce of what she wanted to say to him, and even what she didn't.

Especially what she didn't.

"Thanks, Granger," he said softly.

She shook her head and waved her hand at him, looking at her feet. She was hiding something.

* * *

"What's another day, right? Was that your thinking?"

Draco nodded, his eyes fixed on the splotch on the ceiling.

Hermione continued writing on her notepad. Her reflexes were working a little slowly from her lack of sleep, and being in the same room as Draco was making her even more clumsy. She took a second to collect her thoughts and remember what she was about to write before continuing and setting down her quill. There was a good couple minutes of silence, and he knew that she was now staring at him apologetically. It would usually have annoyed him... but it didn't. Nothing she did annoyed him anymore - he felt nothing, as if he was incapable of feeling anything past the silent sadness that had consumed him for the past couple hours.

What was _wrong_ with him? Surely that potion they had given him wouldn't blanket his emotions.

"And um... one more question - "

"What are you getting out of all this?"

Hermione stared at him. He was inquiring about her personal life again. "Look, Draco... this isn't you and me talking right now. This is Draco Malfoy and his therapist. You really need to understand that."

"We really do need to talk, _you and me_, Granger."

Hermione stared at him again.

In a way, she had failed him. _She _was the one that had made it too personal in the beginning. If she were any kind of therapist, she would have talked to him as if he were any other patient. And now, when she had finally gotten over the fact that he was Draco Malfoy, prat extraordinaire, it stopped mattering that he'd even been that way in the beginning. Everything had been awkward then, and it was still awkward now, though for different reasons - and it was her fault.

She couldn't get over him, no matter how much they'd talked. She'd seen him talk to her as if she was his therapist, but she could not stop thinking of him as who he was and who he had been for his whole life. Who he'd been to _her_.

And now, it was clear that they did not have a therapist-patient relationship.

But apparently, that was exactly the kind of therapy that he needed. After all, he'd still gotten better.

She wondered - would he have changed if he'd gotten one of her colleagues, who didn't know him like she knew him, who didn't have the personal history with him and thus the knowledge of how to make him tick?

She, herself, could make him tick, because of who she was, and what she was to him.

Maybe _that's_ why he had changed at all.

"I'm serious." He was looking at her now, cutting her to pieces with his eyes.

She tried not to think back to how they'd looked when he'd been sitting on the floor behind her couch - how she could see his soul right through them if she was close. She sighed as she shook these thoughts away, giving in. "What did you want to talk about?"

Draco ran his hand through his shortened hair. "There are just... so many things that I'm not sure of now. We've been at this point before, and something tells me that we'll be here again..."

Hermione shook her head, trying not to think what she was thinking, because it was a dangerous thought - the kind of thought that could torture her if she was wrong. Was he talking about his therapy? Why did he care what she got out of this?

Was he trying to understand why she was doing it?

"I don't know what you're saying." He was always doing that - speaking out of the blue about something that he'd been thinking about, and only he would know the meaning of.

"I think you know," he said quietly, still staring.

She _hated_ it when he stared at her like that. It made her feel vulnerable. "I really don't."

"Well," he said, getting up, "if you don't know what I'm talking about, then clearly I have something wrong." He quickly turned his face away from her.

What was she _getting_ out of all this? What was that supposed to mean?

"Draco... I - "

"What ever you have to say," he said, turning back, his hand on the doorknob, "think about it really hard. If you mean it, then tell me tomorrow, when I give you my assignment." And with that, he left her office, leaving Hermione to stare after him.


	14. Caring

**Chapter Fourteen: Caring**

Why was she dreading this day? It didn't make any sense.

She should have been excited to see what he'd been working on for her. She hadn't even had to remind him yesterday.

Hermione looked down at her half-opened red button up shirt, wondering why this had happened. And what was it, anyway? Did she even _know_ what she was feeling about the whole thing? Certainly it wasn't what she thought it was:

The possibility that... she was really beginning to care about him more than she ever should.

She snorted humorlessly and finished buttoning her shirt down. As if Draco Malfoy - that cold-hearted bastard - could feel anything close to that. Well, no, that wasn't true. He'd _proven_ that he could feel. Pain, happiness, love.

Over the past couple months, he'd really transformed. He'd become the most sensitive person she knew, if she really thought about it.

_Try getting Harry to admit some of the things he had,_ she thought against her will.

But that didn't change the fact that his heart - his actual heart - couldn't let anyone inside. And even if it could, would he even want someone there?

Hermione covered her face with her hands, realizing just how deep in the shit she really was.

* * *

"What the fuck am I doing?" Draco said, looking at his assignment.

He'd woken up that morning, looked at the thing next to him... and suddenly wanted to rewrite the entire thing.

He'd known that he'd be showing it to her. He'd known that he'd be explaining it, reading it, and answering questions until the thing was completely picked apart... but he hadn't felt exactly how difficult that would be.

And especially after yesterday. He must have been strung out on something when he'd told her he'd be giving her the assignment today. There was no way he'd be giving it to her now.

_Chicken_, she whispered.

Draco stiffened. She'd said that to him the first day he'd walked in her office, and at the time, he hadn't understood why. Now, he knew:

She'd thought he was a coward for not sharing himself. She'd thought he was weak because he was not sensitive. And what was he doing now? Wanting to run and hide; hide from her the event that he'd chosen, hide the fact that he'd been thinking about it ever since it happened. Because what would that show?

That he was beginning to care about her and what she thought more than he ever should.

He looked at his assignment. _Work is definitely going to feel like Hell. _He had three hours of working in the Hall of Prophecy before his appointment. Hopefully, Ron did not approach him with any difficult questions before he went to his meeting - because he didn't know how properly his brain was going to work.

* * *

For the record, Ron was _not_ blind.

He'd seen something going on between them.

He really should have been feeling supremely jealous. He should have wanted to lash out at Draco. But he didn't. Because in reality, he had hoped for as much.

As much as he wouldn't like to admit it, Draco was starting to become his friend. And if that wasn't already weird enough to begin with, he actually found that they could have always been friends if their personalities hadn't gotten in the way.

It was something completely out of an alternate universe that Draco Malfoy liked the same quidditch team, the same players, and even the same style of gameplay. Then, he'd found out more - they could talk for hours about the Hogwarts teachers as well. After listening to Draco go on about Professor Trelawney, and how he'd had to fake that dreadful Dream Diary with the most ridiculous things, he'd found himself telling him about his own Dream Diary. And they'd laughed over some of Snape's mannerisms, even though he had apparently been Draco's favorite teacher.

Of course, he was still a huge prick, and he couldn't forgive him for the torment just yet - but he wasn't stupid enough to think that it was all Malfoy's fault. It was his own fault as well.

"Hey, Draco. Feeling better than yesterday, I hope."

Draco nodded and hung his cloak in the closet across from Ron, who was fixing his shirt.

"It sounded serious, the way Hermione described it."

"It was..." Draco looked up at the ceiling, searching for an adequate word. "Frightful."

Ron looked at him properly now. "What was the dream about?"

Draco shook his head, and Ron thought he wasn't going to answer, understandably. So Draco surprised him when he said: "It was about her. She was bleeding like crazy and I was drowning in her blood."

Ron shivered. "That's... pretty disgusting."

"It was more horrifying than disgusting, really - it was two of my greatest fears, balled into one vision."

"Really?" Ron said, looking distinctly mischievous. He pretended to be deep in thought.

Draco looked at him suspiciously, and then smiled at the joke. "In that case, I also fear a double scoop of ice cream."

"Me too," Ron said admittedly. "Though a slice of apple pie really gets me."

Draco laughed at that, wondering how they managed to turn his nightmare into a joke. It made him feel better about his impending doom.

* * *

Impending doom indeed.

"So, you said that you'd have your assignment for me today. What event did you choose to pick apart?"

Draco stared at her, folding and unfolding the parchment between his fingers. _This is it._ He handed it over to her, taking in her frown at his handiwork as she undid the folds slowly. He watched her face as she began reading.

_When I realized that you actually cared about me._

_You said that you couldn't leave me the way I was, that day..._

Hermione's heart lodged itself in her throat. She could _never_, in a million years, have predicted _that_ to be his chosen topic. They'd talked about the assignment, and looking back, she realized that he'd revealed nothing about what topic he'd chosen. He'd been very general in his talk about it - and now, she understood why. She put her hand to her chest to try to quell her heartbeat.

He'd taken this way more seriously than she'd ever thought he would.

Suddenly, everything he'd been doing for the past couple of days made sense.

"'You okay?" He was staring at her with what looked like genuine concern. It was a backwards way of asking her what she thought though, and she saw that as well.

Hermione looked up at him, trying to convey what she was feeling. That emotion that had always bit at her when she looked at him turned into something different. She'd wanted, before, to crush him with everything that she felt about her life, and about life in general - all the evil, all the hatred, and all the bitterness of the world. She'd wanted him to feel everything the way it was, and the way he should feel it - he should feel certain emotions towards certain things.

Now, she wanted the same thing - in a different form.

She wanted to take everything she was feeling about him, everything she was feeling about his choice, everything she was feeling about the paper itself, and everything that was probably written inside it, and ball all of it up into a ball of light. She wanted that light to shine brighter than any sun in his life as she pressed all of it down on him, so that he could just _know_ what she thought, and _know_ what she felt.

How could she possibly tell him how... unreasonably happy his choice made her?

He considered their little dinner outing to be a significant event in his life? Just the realization that it was significant showed her that he did have a level of awareness. The assignment was meant as one learning experience amoung many, but he'd turned it into his ultimate turning point. It was incredible. Draco Malfoy, that stick of coal that could never be turned into gold...

But just the fact that it concerned something that she did made it was past the point of a therapist's joy. It was personal. He was going to be a better person because she cared, and he understood what it meant because of her.

"Are you going to read it?" he asked her quietly.

She'd been staring at him. "Um, yes." She looked back down at the page:

_... and I did not understand why. Why would anyone, especially you, want to pick me up again after you'd thrown me down? I thought that if our roles were switched, I probably would not have done the same. And I tried to think of why you'd do that - why would someone who'd hated me for years and who'd gotten nothing out of me except for contempt treat me like any other person? I was so angry at you - I felt as if my brain actually grew some nerve endings and began to ache from all the stress. Everything about you annoyed me to no end. But then you said, while we were sitting at that table, that you couldn't leave me that way; in your eyes, I saw something, and I knew that you really meant it. It didn't annoy me, it didn't make me angry that you were doing the right thing, because I think then, I understood what it meant to do the right thing._

Hermione looked back up at him.

Why was she acting like this? Was his paper that much of a spectacle? He'd thought that he'd changed more than that.

"How is it?" he asked her, studying her expression.

Hermione schooled her features and cleared her throat. "It's... excellent."

_Doing the right thing has to come from the heart. Genuine honesty, integrity, giving - all of these things suddenly made sense to me, when I had rolled my eyes at these general words before. I understood why people do these things, even though there is not always personal gain - it is the good thing, and the right thing to do. And in order to do the right thing and mean it, you have to care._

Hermione couldn't read any more. She looked at him.

"This is truly fantastic... I'm absolutely gobsmacked."

Draco said nothing, but his face lit up a bit at her words.

"And... I'm sure you know, but _this_, this assignment, is the thanks I get for my good deed, and it feels wonderful."

_You have to be a pretty good person to do something for me and not expect anything in return; but I hadn't realized exactly how much that was until then. I hadn't realized how hard you were trying even though I must have gotten on your last nerve. I'm still trying to see that as a good thing, though it's going to take a while for me to really understand that._

_But at least I'm here on the good side now, and I'm dropping anchor._

It was admittedly poorly written, and without prior planning. She knew that he'd probably written it over time; the choppiness of the style was apparent, and the inability to establish a clear thought, but she didn't care. Putting her core of academia away for a time, she saw, through the parchment, the time he'd spent fussing over the thing, and that was what mattered.

Draco, unfortunately, was suddenly unhappy about her reaction. He'd thought, somewhere in the back of his head, that she'd be extremely happy about his choice, and about his paper. And she was. But he'd been hoping that she wouldn't just be happy that he was changing, happy that she, as his therapist, was making an impact on him. He had written that she had cared about him as a person, and that was what inspired his change.

Now he wasn't so sure.

He tried to push this thought out of his head and reached down into the pit of his stomach for his next statement. "There's something else, Granger."

Hermione looked back up at him with the biggest grin on her face, letting it fall a little when she saw his expression.

"I was reading one day, you know, during my research, in a book about ancient emotional magic - "

"Divine magic," Hermione said, nodding. "Divine" magic was the more commonly known term for it, though the type of magic was anything but commonly known.

"And um." He fidgeted a bit. "There was this passage about soulmates." He didn't dare look up for fear that her expression would tell him what she was thinking.


	15. Implications

**Chapter Fifteen: Implications**

"What about it?" she asked, scanning his assignment. She looked back at him.

Draco gave her a pleading look, and wondered why he'd even said anything. What could she possibly make of that information? Would she even believe that there was a distinct possibility that they were soulmates? She had become his best friend, in reality, the only person in the world who actually understood him on some level - but how would she take it if he mentioned something that sounded like it could go a step further?

He hadn't even thought of her as his best friend until he'd read that passage, and now he wished that he hadn't read it; it was twisting everything up into something he didn't recognize.

Or maybe twisting it into something he did recognize, but didn't want to admit to or acknowledge.

"What did it say about soulmates? Does it have to do with the prophecy you're researching?"

Draco shook his head and closed his eyes. "It has to do with us."

Hermione looked at him incredulously, hoping that he didn't mean what she thought he meant. "What are you on about?"

Draco opened is cloak and took out a leather-bound book. He was feeling distinctly sick to his stomach now that he'd gotten a taste of what her inevitable reaction would be.

"It's right here - " he flipped to the bookmarked page and gave her the book.

He watched her face as she read the passage, wondering why he would ever tell her. Of course she would be appalled by the very idea that they could be soulmates, and of course she would be appalled of the very idea that he would think about that. What the whole thing suggested - that he thought that they should give it a try romantically - would surely send her running. And even though that was not his intention, there was no way for her to know that.

"I don't know what to say to this, Draco." He looked up at her, reading her expression. "I'm... I don't know what to make of it all."

"You don't have to make anything of it. It's just something I read that explained a lot. It was bothering me."

"No, Draco. It's not just something you read," she said lowly, looking at him. There was an edge to her voice. She didn't know why she was suddenly feeling agitated - perhaps a tiny part of her had hoped that there would be something - anything - that would bring them together, but not like this. She looked at him, and saw his expression - he was... disappointed? It was too much. "What does this mean to you?"

"It was just a thought - you don't have to get mad about it."

"I'm not mad."

"Well, you certainly look mad," he assessed, looking down.

There was silence as she stared at him.

_This has happened before, so why do I feel like this? Of course patients think they love me because I listen to them and I simulate a friendship. Of course he would feel the same way; I'm probably the only person he has in the world. And as much as I care about him, I never thought he'd feel this way about me._

"I'm sorry," he said, not looking up at her.

"Don't be sorry. I know that this kind of magic is very strong, and I believe every word that is written here... I just don't know if it applies to what you were saying about that awareness that I appear to have."

He wasn't sorry about the implications - he was sorry that he'd brought it up. "Of course it applies, Granger. It says it nearly word for word; it describes it so perfectly. You just don't want that person to be me." There was a note of accusation in his voice.

That had definitely hurt her more than it should have. Hermione realized that she was practically rejecting him when he was putting himself out on a limb, which was something he hadn't done since she'd made him cry. "I never said that."

"You were thinking it. And who said," Draco continued, raising his voice a bit, "that I even wanted that, in the way that you think? _I_ never said that."

"_You_ were thinking it." He was starting to get defensive, and she wasn't about to let this be about her.

It was pretty clear at this point that they weren't on the same page.

"How do you know that?"

She shook her head, looking back over the passage. "Why would you tell me if you thought it wasn't the case? ..."

"It doesn't matter," he said, getting up. "Think what you want. Make of it what you want. I've stopped caring. Are we done with the therapy bullshit yet? Because I don't know what I'm doing here - "

"That's hogwash! Therapy has helped you so much - "

"I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THAT."

Hermione blinked. Why was_ he _so mad suddenly? "Sometimes you make no sense. What _are_ you talking about?" she asked quietly.

He saw the therapist come out - she was trying to quell his temper by being calm. It made him even more angry. "I'm talking about that soulmate thing. I'm NOT trying to chat you up, and I'm NOT saying that I want us to hook up and have kids or something. I'm just saying that it explained a lot. Why are you always jumping to conclusions? Stop being a fucking therapist for _two seconds_, and just read the words on the page."

Hermione shook her head, feeling her throat close up. He was getting very close to something that she did not want out in the open - the fact that most of the time, she couldn't turn off the therapist in her. She was constantly analyzing and looking for secret meanings. She looked at him squarely, viciously dishing out her next words. "For the two hours you are in my office, I am your therapist, and no one else. How many times do I have to tell you?"

Draco stared at her, still standing. His eyes were piercing, trying to figure out what she was thinking. If she looked away, he would know - and she did not need to be the one on that couch right now. She could tell that her words had definitely hurt him - his expression now reflected a certain coldness that she knew from their first meetings. And more than anything, she could tell that he really wanted to bring her down.

It was obvious that he'd thought that they were friends now. And it was obvious that he was hurting for her deception.

The fact that it wasn't deception in his case... was something he did not need to know to understand her point.

He shook his head, looking up at the ceiling as if to deter any tears from falling. "You know, Granger... when a person gets every feeling of privacy, and friendship, and caring from you... and then you suddenly turn back into the government social worker..."

It had hurt him more than she had realized. His actual heart had been shat upon at this point. _So he can let people inside._ She was immediately contrite. "You know I didn't mean it like that - "

"Did you? I'm not sure anymore. When you took me to St. Mungo's and stayed there all night waiting for me, what was going on there? Was that a part of your job?"

Hermione stared at him, searching her brain for something to say. He was close to his breaking point again; she could feel him teetering on the fringes of sanity.

"And when you came over to my house to play doctor, what was going on there? Are you, in reality, just as evil as I am? All of that feels so manipulative now."

She closed her eyes for a second, trying not to lash out at that. "Sometimes you think I'm talking to you as Hermione Granger... most of the time I'm talking to you as a counselor. I've told you to forget about who we are - "

"And I've already said that I couldn't do it."

" - But I really do care about you, Draco."

He snorted. "The same way you care about your little friends? Or the way you care about some abandoned cat you find on the street, that would die without your care so you feel _obligated_ to take it in. You manipulate the poor thing into thinking that you care, when in reality you are just doing it because you feel like you have to or you're out for some petty revenge for the scratches the cat has dealt you. "

Ah. So is that why he wanted to know what she got out of it all yesterday?

"That's not even what's going on here, Draco - "

"Of course it is! Don't even try to tell me otherwise. I've got you figured out."

Hermione narrowed her eyes. He was getting to her now. "Oh really? I highly doubt that."

His temper visibly flared at her holier-than-thou tone. "_Climb down_," he said dangerously.

"You know what? If you're too blind to figure out why I help you, then you can bloody leave!" She threw out her arm, pointing at the door.

He leaned forward. "_Make me._"

She stared at him incredulously. This was _her_ office. _Has he learned nothing since he's come here? Certainly he knows better than to challenge my authority in my own office._

"If you're too scared to admit the truth, then I'm not the one who needs a shrink."

She realized, then, that they were arguing just like they'd used to. This argument they were having - an argument that was saying basically nothing - was seriously hurting everything that they'd accomplished.

"Are you telling me that my entire paper is wrong? I can't believe I actually thought that you cared."

"I DO CARE. I CARE MORE THAN YOU COULD EVER KNOW!"

He snorted again.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, getting out of her chair slowly. She knew that she was getting a little too emotional about this, but she had not broken open the barriers of his mind only to have him close this out. "Do you have _any _idea how much I've done for you? Do you have any idea of how many opportunities I've had to sabotage you, opportunities I did not take? And do you have any idea _why _I haven't sabotaged you?" She was standing right in front of him, jabbing her finger at him. "Don't you even _dare_ make this about me and what I do. Yes, I manipulate. But I do it because I care. _So much_."

He looked down at her. "That makes no sense."

"Why do you think I try so hard? If I didn't care, then I wouldn't do some of the things I do for you. Sometimes, I need to manipulate in order to help you. This is, after all, more than a job to me."

He laughed humorlessly. "So is _that_ why you do this? You think that you're contributing to the greater good?"

_Did I NOT just say that I do this because I CARE?!_

Hermione crossed her arms in front of her, lifting her chin a bit. He still wasn't getting it - and furthermore, if he was about to challenge her ideas about her job and its contribution to the world, he was about to get stepped on in a major way, therapy be damned.

To her surprise, he nodded and looked at her squarely, speaking quietly. "You don't need to tear me down. You know I get it." He waved his hand at her.

She furrowed her brows. He was doing it again; he had gotten stuck on some extraneous thought and said something that only he would understand. These thoughts tended to come completely out of nowhere. "You get what?"

"That I'm a shithead." He stepped forward, and she had to tilt her head up to keep looking at him.

She didn't exactly know how to answer that, so she nodded. Now she understood - he was arguing because he didn't know what else to do. It was his way of covering himself.

"You really need to stop doing that," she muttered.

"I know it."

She sighed, stepping around her desk and falling into her seat. "You've got nothing to protect here."

He raised his eyebrows at her. "I feel like I do."

Hermione shook her head and closed his emotional magic book before rubbing some life back into her face. _Please tell me that I didn't waste the last five minutes of my life. _"You've done well with this assignment. I am really happy about it - or I was, before we went off like that. It shows that you are changing on the inside."

Draco shook his head and fell heavily onto the blue sofa. "You're doing it again," he said tiredly.

She stared at him. This time, she didn't have to ask him what he was talking about. "You know what I mean."


	16. Nostalgia

**Chapter Sixteen: Nostalgia**

"No crap now, Malfoy. I want you to tell me what you think about us being soulmates."

She'd called him Malfoy - she didn't call him that anymore unless she meant business. He looked up at the ceiling and fixed his gaze on the splotch there. It looked bigger than usual. "In truth, I don't know how I feel about it."

She could tell that he wanted to leave it at that in order to hide the conflict; she wasn't having any of that.

He wanted to roll his eyes at her look, but he couldn't muster the attitude necessary. "I don't know if I'm ready to talk about it yet."

"Did I scar you that badly?"

He nodded.

She looked away, making a note on her notepad. _Still a drama queen_. "How about we talk about your dream? Can you tell me about it, or is it too soon?"

Draco closed his eyes, letting the images of the dream float under his eyes. "It will always be too soon."

She made a note: _Life changing experience - the nightmare?_

"Are you comfortable - "

"I'll _never_ be comfortable talking about it, Granger. It was a vision out of my own personal hell designed to crush me. What do _you_ think? Blood everywhere, being helpless and out of control of my fate - two things that I'm really afraid of. And it just had to involve someone that I - " He stopped himself, and finished the sentence quietly." - care about."

Hermione cleared her throat, trying to gloss over this admission by pretending not to make a big deal out of it. She did not want them to start arguing again. "Why didn't you take the potion I gave you?"

She'd asked him this already. "Because it had your blood in it."

He'd already told her that. Now she needed to dig deeper. "Why did the idea of drinking a potion made with my blood deter you from thinking about your own safety? Was it because... you didn't want to ingest impure blood?"

There was a deafening silence as the word "impure" ate up the air in the room.

"That's not even _close_ to the reason," he whispered darkly.

_Changing perspective on bloodlines: offended by insinuation of racism._

"I don't know, Granger, there are so many factors. I didn't know it was that serious that I drink the potion that night. I didn't think I'd have a nightmare like that, even though you cursed me into oblivion earlier in the day. I didn't like the idea of drinking your blood either - it didn't feel right. Not to mention the fact that drinking blood at _all_ is pretty disgusting and gruesome if you aren't a vampire. And... you said that one could drink a pint of blood before one got sick, and there was at least a pint in that potion."

Hermione nodded. She'd figured most of this out already. She had just needed to make sure that he'd done it for the right reasons. "That's only blood in its pure form. The other potion ingredients caused a chemical reaction with it and changed the formula. You should have known that."

"I did... it just didn't matter to me - it was still blood. I looked at that blue vial and saw that white bowl."

Hermione made a few more notes on her parchment. "I'm sorry about that, by the way," she said, not looking up.

"You should be," he huffed, crossing his arms.

Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "So you'd rather die than ingest my blood?"

Ouch. Draco stared at her. "How am I supposed to answer that?"

"Answer it however you want."

"I refuse."

Hermione sighed and felt her forehead. _She looks a little pale today,_ Draco recognized, feeling a twinge of guilt.

"I think that's enough for this meeting. I want you to go home and think about what we've been discussing. And one more thing." She looked at him. "You need to start making contact with your old friends, and make new ones. You've been cooped up in your flat every second you're not at work or here."

Draco looked at the ceiling, fixing his eyes on his splotch. "I thought I wasn't supposed to 'fraternize' with my old life."

Hermione shook her head. "That was before. Now that you've changed, I need you to dig up old relationships so you can evaluate them."

"I don't have any bloody friends, Granger."

Hermione picked up her quill again and made a note on her paper. "Of course you do. What about Goyle? Pansy? And weren't you friends with Blaise Zabini?" He shook his head, crossing his arms.

"None of them want to talk to me."

"Just trust me, Draco. It helps you find your place. That is all."

* * *

"What is this place?" Blaise Zabini said as they walked through a pair of doors into the warmly lit little restaurant.

Draco looked around, feeling distinctly pissy. "I have no idea. But the food is good."

They were at _Parachute_, the only place Draco could think of to spend time with his former mate. He did not, under any circumstances, want Blaise to see his pitiful flat, nor was he inclined to visit him at work even though Draco got off two hours earlier than Blaise. Even though Blaise had a slight air of pomp about him, he was and had always been logical and trustworthy, and thus Draco had liked him the most of all of his comrades.

They sat in silence for a good five minutes as they studied the menus and drank coffee. Draco, in the meantime, contemplated the awkwardness that had settled between them with so much time.

"How's everything going with you?" Blaise had spoken.

"Not so bad," Draco responded. "It's getting better on my end."

"I heard that Potter up and set you free." There was a hint of a sneer on his face.

Draco nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. "Potter always has to be the righteous prat, you know that," he muttered. "But a lot of good has come from it."

Blaise shook his head, looking around him at the other people in the restaurant, and then down into his coffee cup. There was a moment of silence before Blaise leaned in a little closer to Draco. "They've taken everything from you, mate."

Draco hadn't thought of that in a while. He was getting used to a life without a wand, a life without riches, and a life without constant help, and it certainly had not been easy at first. But since he had relinquished his former life anyway when he went to Azkaban and had been living for three years without being nourished in that way, he had become accustomed to it.

"I know it. But like I said, it's not so bad anymore." Draco drained his cup. "And besides, it was the Dark Lord that put me in this mess to begin with."

His friend was certainly surprised to hear Draco speak so brazenly about the Dark Lord, but then again, even now it was hard for the people to get over his death. The public was reluctant to criticize him or even say his name still. "Yes, I suppose it is," he said after a moment, sighing around his coffee cup.

"How about you?"

Blaise shook his head again. "No different than usual, really. Mum's still a man-trapping tart. You'd think she'd grow out of it." It was not uncommon for Blaise to speak this way about his mother. "I am working in World Affairs for the Ministry, though."

"Is it as hard a job as it sounds?"

"Definitely." Blaise smirked. He looked around again. "I've been meaning to ask you - what does the name of this place mean? It's certainly... different."

Unfamiliar surroundings tended to make people uncomfortable, Draco realized. "I've... been told that it's a muggle life-saving device of some sort. It works like a hover charm."

Blaise titled his chin up in understanding, moving his arms off the table as his sandwhich was placed before him. "You like muggles now then?"

Draco stared at him. "Not necessarily." It had been very hard for him to realize exactly how much he had changed since he had last seen Blaise before. They had almost nothing in common now.

"Who showed you this place anyway?"

Draco stabbed a fork into his side salad.

* * *

"So..."

"Don't ask me, Granger."

She gave him a fierce look. "Don't tell me what I can't ask. I'm guessing that your little outing didn't go too well, then?"

He stood up and paced his way in front of her desk. "It was absolutely torturous!"

"Be patient, Draco. It takes time, you know."

"It's just one bloody thing after another with you, isn't it? If I could just rest a bit before you have me do something else so... taxing!" He ran his fingers through his hair.

"Calm down, will you? I know the process is hard. But you have to make the most of this year, because for anything past that you have to pay out of your own pocket. Don't you want to get better?"

"Yes, I do! Or I did! All of this buggering - "

Hermione threw down her quill. "It's all a part of the process, Draco! After all of this is over, after you have changed, everything gets easier, I promise."

He calmed his breathing, trying to get control over his anger. Why did she insist on torturing him with everything? This was supposed to be therapy, not an extension of his prison sentence.

"Look here," she said, "this is all to help you, and you know it." She realized then how each day, she was learning more and more about him. He had definitely turned out to be a very complex person - certainly more complex than she had orginally thought. "I bet you thought when you first came in here that I just sit here all day and ask you how you feel. That's not what therapy is. Therapy is reaching deep in your heart, deep in your life, and spearing out all of your problems to be dealt with. And I _love_ to get right up in your business, you know that - because the deeper you go into the cave, the more darkness you encounter."

Draco nodded. That made sense. "I had that bloody nightmare only a week ago, Granger. I'm still having panic attacks from it!"

"Well, I can't help that, can I?"

It was his turn to give her a fierce look.

She looked a little apologetic as she rearranged the papers on her desk. "What exactly went wrong do you think?"

Draco thumped back down on her couch, his arm hitting the wooden back of it painfully. "Everything, you twit."

Hermione took a deep breath and made a note: _Revitalizing temper problems with new tasks._

That meant she had to do more poison-sucking. Or in other words, she had to make him snap again.

"Was it awkward?"

Draco threw his hand up. "Yes, it bloody well was! I thought he was going to hex me while my back was turned! It was nothing like back in school. I mean, the second I told him you were my therapist, he just... it was like I was suddenly the poster child for muggles or something!"

She scoffed. "What does he think - I'm here sucking your toes? We are making _progress_ here - I'm not turning you into some kind of 'blood-traitor.'"

He shrugged, still fuming. "Whatever he thinks doesn't matter. I mean, he wasn't even the same person that I remember - it wasn't at all like I remembered."

"Nothing will be, Draco. You need to understand that. _Nothing_ will be the same. You've gotten some ideas in your head now. You are way more traumatized now than you were then. Things have _happened _to you, things that will never dissappear. People you know may be the same - but your relationships are different, and your ideas are different."

The splotch on the ceiling looked distinctively like Crabbe. He could even see a face on it today. "If all that is true... then why are you making me do this? I should just... try... to start anew."

She shook her head, writing away on her parchment. "You need closure from your past. You can't just shove it behind you now that you are ready to face it - "

"I AM NOT READY TO FACE IT!"

"I'll be the judge of that, _patient_. You are, and you just don't want to."

She was _really_ getting on his nerves today. "Of course I don't. All I got back then was grief, you know that." Hermione shook her head, still writing.

"STOP FUCKING WRITING AWAY, WILL YOU? All that talk about caring about me and suddenly you're throwing me to the dragons again! When will I stop getting burned?"

"When you stop walking into the dragon pit."

Oh. She was doing it again - making him angry on purpose. He raked his fingers over his face, leaving a trail of redness on his skin. "HAVE I GONE COMPLETELY MAD?"

"No, not yet. Trust me, you'll know when you have."

* * *

_Stress_.

Hermione leaned her forehead against the wall of the bathroom. She was feeling exceptionally shitty this afternoon. She'd had six straight hours of screaming from Draco, Pansy, and two of her other patients (which included one Marietta Edgecomb, the topping on a perfectly shitty cake of a day,) and then had visited a patient at her house to find her pissed out of her mind from firewhiskey. It was definitely one of the days where she wished she had taken up a job that was a little less stressful.

Of course, Hermione had a talent for psychology. She knew it, her employers knew it, and all of her friends knew it.

But her job was definitely taking its toll on her.

She'd thrown up that morning, after her first patient of the day. She usually didn't throw up; in fact, she could only remember a handful of times in her life when she had, and it had never been from stress. She usually handled stress fairly well.

"'Alright, love?" was Ginny's muffled voice from behind the door. "Neville's just arrived with Lav."

"I'm fine," she said loudly enough for Ginny to hear. "I'll be out in a bit."

And now she had come home only to remember that Ron was throwing a party for Ginny's birthday and her and Harry's marriage. It was a wonder that they'd waited this long to get married anyway... they were all over each other constantly. That was _another_ thing she didn't want to think about; she and Ron had given it a go the other night and it had not turned out very nicely at all.

They were complete blunderers in that regard.

Hermione rose to her feet, willing her face to return to its normal color. As she recalled, Draco was also invited, by her request - a therapist thing, definitely. It would be interesting to see how he got along with a circle of his former enemies.

As she opened the door, Hermione hoped that everyone could refrain from killing each other until _after_ she'd had something strong to drink.


	17. Snake

**Chapter Seventeen: Snake**

Draco definitely stuck out like a sore thumb and was, as expected, an instant mood killer. Neville had taken one look at him and gone straight into a different room, leaving Hermione to chase after him.

"I _must _be having a nightmare," Neville said, holding his sides as if he were afraid that he'd break apart if he let go. "I thought he was still at St. Mungo's."

"It's alright, Neville," Hermione said, putting a hand on his arm. "He's a bit different now. Besides, he doesn't have a wand; you've got nothing to fear."

"It's not the _wand_ I fear," he mumbled back, but followed her into the living room just the same.

Seamus had actually burst out, "What is _he _doing here?" which had earned him a whack on the head courtesy of his former dorm mate.

"He's my mate now. Aren't you, Draco?" Ron threw a fist playfully into Draco, who attempted a weak smile. Being a venom-less snake surrounded by a bunch of not-too-friendly lions did not appeal to him at all.

_Why am I here again? Oh yes, it's a part of my so called therapy. Bollucks, that._

"How's it so far?" Hermione asked quietly, suddenly appearing at his shoulder. Her eyes were dark, which he had come to know as a property she had when she was tired or stressed.

"Fan-fucking-tastic, as expected..." His sneer fell as he looked at her. She didn't need his shit right now, he realized. "You look very nice, Granger," he said, hoping she didn't take his compliment as a way to pull her out of her funk. He needed her to be in top form for tonight, just in case one of her buddies decided to open fire on him - not to mention that he felt a tad guilty to see her so stressed.

She must have been out of it, because she didn't see his intentions. "Why thank you, Draco. So do you."

Draco snorted. "No I don't."

"Nicer than a prisoner, Malfoy," came Harry's voice from behind him. Draco turned a bit to let him in the conversation, though he did not want to speak to him. Just leave it to Harry Potter to make everything worse.

"Yes, it is," Hermione said, looking over at Draco expectantly.

_Ugh._

"Thank goodness for your conscience, Potter," Draco said, looking at the other man. "Otherwise I might be dead right now."

Harry shrugged, taking a sip of what appeared to be a glass of firewhiskey... something Draco was not allowed to have. Stupid parole. "I did what felt right at the time, and apparently it's helped - you aren't as much of a social goblin."

Draco smirked. "I'm still the same social goblin. I'm just a few soul-suckings wiser."

Harry cringed visibly and took another swig of his drink. He understood the power of dementors. "That must have been beyond awful."

Draco nodded, keeping Harry's gaze. "It certainly was. Every day felt like an eternity in there. No color, no music, no happiness, and the only sounds I heard were screaming and crying." He turned to glance at Hermione, and immediately wished that he hadn't.

She was writing on a little pocket notepad.

Draco threw his hands up, rolling his eyes. "Seriously, Granger? I'm not on your couch right now."

Hermione actually grinned at him, and his eyebrows shot up. "I just like to annoy you."

He shook his head and turned back to Harry, who had been watching the little exchange with a note of mirth in his eyes. "Getting better hasn't earned me any friends though, except Granger and Ron."

Harry smiled. "I saved your life, Malfoy - don't tell me that we aren't good mates!"

Attending the little get together were basically people he'd remembered from school - people like Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood, both of whom were looking distinctly frazzled. There were also people that he knew by face - like Seamus, a kid known at school for constantly blowing things up, and one of the Weasley twins, who had been famous for his - and his brother's - tricks, products, and general shenanigans. Draco had popped into their shop once or twice back in school, despite their surname.

Even the pretty red-head that had now taken Potter's side he remembered, as well as the tall, dark-skinned man behind her.

It was surreal, seeing all these people together in the same room. He half expected Professor McGonagall to walk in as well.

"Thank you all for coming," Ginny said, her voice comanding the guests to quiet down.

Draco moved to the back of the room, trying to stay out of everyone's way as to avoid an "accident" of some sort.

"You all know why we're here," she said, grinning. There were cheers around the room, and Harry looked down to hide his growing blush, also grinning. "So why don't we dig in?"

"Now you're talking," Dean said from behind her, earning more cheers and whistles.

"Food's in the next room... and then you know what happens - we have a _proper _party, Gryffindor style!" There was more cheering.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Great."

"What does she mean, 'Gryffindor style?'" Draco asked from behind her. "We all prance around like lions?"

Hermione turned to look at him and sighed. "It means we all eat, get smashed, and act like complete idiots all night long." She looked like she didn't like that fact one bit.

Draco shrugged. _This ought to be quite an experience._ "Don't forget - I still have a curfew to meet."

Hermione shook her head. "Don't worry. I'll get you out of their way before they really start acting crazily." She looked around the room. "And I won't let them hex you."

Draco nodded, feeling glaring eyes on his back. "That would be nice. Do they know that I don't have a wand?"

Hermione hesitated. Some of them had probably figured this out or known this, like Harry and Ginny, but she could not speak for the others. Neville knew, but what could he possibly do to hurt Draco? Well, other than jump on his back and beat him up - which was not something the tentative boy would do.

* * *

"I want to make a toast," Draco said, the first time he had spoken up the entire night. "To Harry Potter - " There was dead silence as everyone in the room turned to look at him. Draco tried not to hyperventilate under their stares. " - without whom, I'd be rotting in Azkaban."

There was more silence as the group tried to process the compliment, and then collectively broke into inebriated grins. "To Harry!" they said.

"And," Draco said over the clinking of glasses, "To Hermione Granger, without whom, I would still be a psychopath."

"You still are," Hermione said, earning chuckles and grins.

"To Hermione!" they said, clinking glasses.

"And, to Ronald Weasley - "

"And to the Fat Friar and Genghis Khan..." said Seamus. The group laughed, and Draco nodded admittedly.

The air warmed up considerably as they drank (Draco from his glass of pumpkin juice) and talked. Draco looked around - Hermione was sitting on his left, Harry on his right. He wondered at this before turning to Harry.

"I like your haircut, by the way, Draco," Harry had said.

Draco reached up and ran his hand through it. "Thanks. I was sick of having it long."

"It makes you look less like an Inferi," said Ginny from beside Harry, looking over at him.

"Or an albino snake," Draco said, looking down at his plate.

* * *

"Alright, Draco. I have something new for you today."

Draco rolled his eyes. "What is it now? You want me to - "

"No," she said, cutting him off before he could annoy her. Hermione set her quill down and took out a stiff, bleached bit of parchment. "What I have you doing now is part of atoning for your crimes. Do you see that?"

He stared at her.

"I am forcing you to look at everything you've known and pick it apart. That is the first part of atonement. What have I shown you? Blood. Your old mates. Significant events in your life. All of these things are supposed to get you to think about the past. Now that we've done those things, I think you should know, accurately, what you were."

"So... this isn't therapy, then. All of this has been behavior correction?"

"I never said that."

"But that's what it _is_, isn't it? Therapy would be convincing me not to kill myself, not giving me more reasons to."

"Draco!" Hermione said sharply. "Didn't I tell you last time what therapy is? It is correcting what is wrong so that you can heal. Healing is only a part of it - we still haven't finished with the other part. You can't just... slap a bandage on a broken arm with some painkilling potion! It doesn't fix the break, it just dulls the pain. You go through the rest of your life with an inferior arm, don't you?"

"But I can't change what happened."

"No, you can't. What happened is done with and gone, there's no fixing it. But you need to understand it, you need to look at and know that it was - "

"Oi, therapist!" Draco said, covering his ears. "Shut it with the rhetoric! I don't want to hear that!"

Hermione put her head in her hands and counted backwards from ten. "Okay then. Do you not want to hear what I was going to say then? Because it starts the healing process."

Draco uncovered his ears. "I want to hear it."


	18. Books and Parchment

**Chapter Eighteen: Books and Parchment**

She titled her head. "Okay then. When you listen to yourself when you talk - "

Draco snorted. "Here we go again - therapist assignment to shove me back under my rock."

"I wasn't _finished_, you twit. When you listen to yourself when you talk _to_ yourself, _in your head_, is what you are saying mostly positive or mostly negative? Tell me the kinds of things that you say to yourself on a daily basis."

"Oh, you mean things like, 'I'm so fucking stupid,' and 'I can't believe I didn't fix that while I had the chance,' and - "

"So you engage in a lot of negative self talk," Hermione said, waving her hand. "That's what I wanted to hear," she muttered to herself, causing Draco to stare at her incredulously. "Now, do you know what the cause was of this negative thinking?"

"You."

Hermione shook her head and made a note on her parchment. "Do you find yourself speaking and thinking negatively about your life, experiences, and yourself?"

"All the time."

"What is it that you like about your personality?"

There was a moment of silence before he responded, "I can never think of anything."

"Dislike?"

"There are much too many things to name at this point."

"Hmm. If there was one word to describe yourself, what would it be?"

Draco thought again. "'Fascist' comes to mind." Hermione gave him a look, and he shrugged. "I don't know, really."

Hermione continued writing. "Well, I don't think I need you to answer any of the other ones. You have cognitive distortions. Do you know what that means?" Draco shook his head. "It means that your perception of reality - of your self reality - is distorted in areas. When you evaluate a situation and come to a conclusion that is not the reality, that can be a cognitive distortion.

"Now, people who have a low opinion of themselves have that opinion because of quite a few factors, including their evaluation of their aptitudes and deficits; their life experiences and what they perceive to be the causes and effects; the thoughts they tend to have in certain situations; general pessimistic thinking; and negative generalizations or irrational beliefs. All of these are contributors to your unhappiness and your pain. In fact, most of these things are properties of people who have depression."

"There's a clinical condition for depressed people?"

"Yes, just like there is a clinical condition for people who shout random obscenities. It's not supernatural."

"So... you think I have depression."

"No, I know that you _don't_ have depression. You still have an amazingly large ego for someone who hates himself so much. What you have is a by-product of your life and experiences." Hermione finished filling out the sheet of paper and set it aside. "The entire time you have been seeing me, I have been trying to get you to understand reality, because your perceptions of things are always completely off base. I've had to reprogram you, so to speak. And I'm not finished. Now that I have let you know what morals you should have and you have adopted some of them, I need to start changing, more, the perceptions you have about yourself, because they are not always accurate."

"Sure they are. I'm an idiot - correct. Everyone hates me - correct. I've come this far on pure luck - correct."

"No, Draco. There is something different with you. For some reason, the perception you have of yourself is a tangled mess that we need to sort through and rearrange together. For some things, your ego shows, and for others, you put yourself down. We need to establish what's the what."

"So you basically made me think of myself as a piece of crap and now you're trying to fix it?"

"_No!_ I brought to light what you already knew and didn't want to accept. That was my gift to you - and trust me, it is a gift. Now we need to start clearing out the negative feelings. What I'm _not_ going to do is tell you that you are the king of the world and oh-so-wonderful. I am going to mold you into the person _worthy_ of being thought of in a positive light, and will help you see the goodness and the progress when you cannot see it for yourself."

Draco looked at his splotch on the ceiling, the calmest look coming over his face. It was beginning to look more like a rabbit. "I'm a bad person, Hermione," he said softly. "I don't know if you can change that."

Hermione stared at him for a few reasons. She had never heard him speak in such a familiar manner to her - the way her name came out of his mouth sounded extremely strange, as if he had never said it before or had only just learned what her real name was. It was also the first seemingly sincere time he had told her this, and he sounded like he really thought that way.

Underneath it all, she saw something else as well -

He didn't think he could change anymore. He didn't think that he could heal.

"We have done so much, Draco. Of course it gets better."

"I think I've reached that wall you talk about."

Hermione shook her head. "We're starting the healing process anyway. One thing you learn about patients is that there are some things that are set in stone, never to be changed, and there are some things that aren't. We'll find what we can change here, and understand the things we can't."

"For example, I've tried to make myself care about people. I've tried to make myself care about the world, care about its problems, and even care more about myself... but I don't think I can do it."

Hermione shook her head. "It doesn't just happen overnight, and it doesn't just click one day. Caring is something that grows over time, and is not something you can force yourself to do. I'll let you know when you are there."

* * *

Draco straightened his tie. It was the morning once again, he had work once again, and he had to see his therapist at 10 once again.

The difference?

Draco was feeling extremely good.

He had taken some of Hermione's blue potion the night before and had determined that newborn babies could not sleep better. He had gotten a proper breakfast. And it had been a few weeks since Hermione had given him a that nightmare. He couldn't really know why he was feeling so great - it was something in the air, maybe. Or - just maybe - it was Hermione Granger's therapy sessions.

He doubted that though.

* * *

Draco stared at her.

"Is it true?"

Hermione kept her gaze on her desktop, knowing exactly what he was talking about. For whatever reason, everyone was extremely surprised by the news. She hesitated for a few more seconds before letting him have it.

"Yes. I am pregnant."

Draco ran his hands through his hair. To be honest, he didn't know how he felt about that. When Ron had told him that morning... it was like the world had suddenly stopped turning. It's not that he wasn't supportive... but he just did not know how to take it.

Hermione Granger was the one continuity in his life at the moment, the one thing that stood still when time would not. Now, even she was changing...

He cleared his throat. "Whew, Granger. What timing. You're the type to wait for marriage."

"Am I, now?"

Draco shook his head. "Well, I know you two are getting married soon... I don't know, it's just... so weird."

Hermione looked at him. "Just because I am a serious person does not mean that I lack the reproductive organs necessary."

Okay, he _really_ didn't need to hear all of that. "I thought Potter was more your type anyway. I thought you'd go for him."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well," Draco said, thinking. "You know, the knight in shining armor, sword blazing... kind of thing. And he does have nice eyes. Innocent looking." Hermione's lips quirked into a smirk, so Draco quickly backtracked. "I mean, I notice these things. I'm not gay or anything, but I do notice."

She shook her head, opening his file on her desk. "Harry is a complete stud - or he could be if he had a little more meat on his bones - but he is like a brother to me more than anything."

Draco's face lit up a bit. "Younger or older?"

Hermione thought before grinning back. "Most of the time, younger." She got out her quill and parchment. "So why don't you have a girlfriend, Draco?"

Draco shook his head, leaning back on the couch. "Much the opposite of public opinion, my bed is all sealed in slippery plastic. No girl wants to date me."

Hermione made a note on her parchment pad, nodding. "I'm sure that's not true," she said quietly.

"Trust me, it's true. No one wants to date a felon. It's an instant mood killer on dates."

Hermione suddenly grinned. She was looking really nice today, actually - she was glowing. "I have to tell you this story."

Draco shrugged, wondering at her good mood. "Go for it."

"Okay. Once when I was fifteen, I was riding the public bus system, and this guy tried to chat me up. He was a complete creep." Hermione paused and wrote something on her parchment. "So in order to get rid of him, I had to think fast."

"A little 'Stupefy' under the seat?"

"No. I pretended to be insane. I was saying things like, 'I take medication for my homicidal urges,' and 'it doesn't kick in for another hour.' And then I would say, 'If you want to go on a date with me, I have to know your full name and address just in case my psychotic step-dad has to kill you later.'"

"Wow. I'm impressed." He was chuckling.

"It was quite funny, actually. I was saying things like, 'I stabbed this girl in the eye once,' and 'I have a criminal record in Switzerland.' He got away from me really quickly."

"Wow, Granger. That is creative."

"I know. I was really proud of myself, I went home and told my parents about it. They laughed too." She was silent for a few seconds before she looked back at her parchment. "Okay, back to my question. Are you even trying to get a girlfriend? Significant others have a way of making us feel good about ourselves."

Draco smirked. "I never _try_. I just wait for them to come. You know, you chase a butterfly and it flies away, but if you sit still, it just might land on you."

Hermione nodded, writing away. "Well, that is an interesting philosophy. At least I know you won't become a womanizing pig."

He shook his head and looked at the ceiling. "That never got me very far. People hated me anyway; the only girl who could stand me was Pansy, and she had her own reasons for liking me. Of course, after I went to Azkaban she met some other guy somewhere, which is fine, I guess."

Hermione looked at him. "Are you still thinking about that bit?"

"No, it's fine. I could tell she wasn't all that happy; I wasn't ever really nice to her, even when we were going out. I ignored her a lot."

"Just so you know, women hate that."

Draco nodded admittedly. "Yes, I figured."

"Anyway, I was asking because it is a step in your healing process, a step towards caring about people. We've been working on this for a little bit, haven't we? But you need to take it a step further. You still have half a year on your parole, no wand, and no big beautiful Malfoy Manor - but we are not concerned with that yet. Trust me, once you get it back it won't even feel like home."

"It never did," Draco muttered.

Hermione stared at him for a few seconds before saying, "But it must be gorgeous."

Draco shook his head, eyebrows raised. "There's no doubt of that. Huge library too..." He smiled at Hermione's look of interest.

She shook the look off her face. "Well, like I said, we aren't concerned with that yet. Right now, we are trying to get you on a positive track. Since you don't really have your family left, and it would take a miracle for you to care about them based on what you've told me... we'll try the significant other. The girl who works at the counter here, Asteria, likes you. I know she's a little young, but only by maybe two years. Why don't you take her out to lunch or something - she's got her seventh year at Hogwarts coming up fast."

He remembered her - she was pretty. And her eager "Hello, Mr. Malfoy," every day was not lost on him. He, of course, only nodded to her in return.

"I say you should go for it. As a therapy thing, _and_ a personal thing." Hermione smiled.

Draco stared at her. "Is it me, or are you suddenly placing some stock in girlie stuff like having a boyfriend?"

She glared at him playfully. "I realize its importance - I'm not all books and parchment. But I've always had better things to do."

"Well, maybe I do too."

"No you don't. Ask her out as you leave. I'll be watching you."

_So much for having Granger as a soulmate._ "Yes ma'am."

* * *

_Author's Note_: Make sure you guys visit my profile page for author's notes and updates... also, I have a treat for all you fans - some fanart (sort of.) The link is on my profile page. Happy reading!


	19. Afternoon

**Chapter Nineteen: Afternoon**

Asteria turned out to be a lot like Hermione, which Draco liked for some reason. She was interested in history, she loved to read...

...and she had a strange way of keeping his attention.

Draco had assumed that Asteria would be a frivolous, mindless girl who would be giggling at everything and ordering a salad for lunch... instead she was quiet and intelligent.

"So this is your last year at Hogwarts coming up?" he asked, folding his arms on the table.

"Yes. I can't wait," she said, twirling her glass of tea around. It was the third time Draco had come to this little restaurant; he was beginning to like it, and thought of it as his go to place for when he wanted to take someone out. That dreadful day, it seemed, was useful for something.

She had a quiet voice, but was not shy; Asteria Greengrass had dark hair, pale skin, and dark green eyes, which reminded him of Harry Potter in a way; her face was long and she had a small, pointy chin under small, puffy lips. Her hair was also braided like Hermione's - a long french braid down her back.

Draco sat up a little straighter in his seat.

"How is your therapy going?" she asked him, looking into his eyes.

"It's better. I'm not a deranged psychopath anymore, I don't think."

She nodded slowly. "That's good," she said, smiling slowly. "I've got nothing to be afraid of then."

Draco was actually surprised by the forwardness of this statement. "No, you don't," he said back.

"Although, explaining how I know you to my parents will be a little hard. Can you imagine that conversation?"

_'Where did you meet him?' 'At the shrink's office.'_ Draco smirked.

"Hopefully they think you are a therapist and not a patient." She shook her head. "Where do you work, anyway?"

"At the Ministry, in the Department of Mysteries."

"So if you told me what you do there, you'd have to kill me."

Draco actually grinned at this - she had a sense of humor. "Yes, I would."

"It's a shame, that."

"But since I am _not _a deranged psychopath, maybe I can resist the killing. I work in the Hall of Prophecy."

Asteria nodded, leaning back as her plate was placed before her by Derek, the server. He looked between them, probably wondering if Draco had two girlfriends and a boyfriend, before backing off. "That must be interesting."

"It is. I've been doing some research on my own on one big prophecy we got a while back. It is no longer considered valid, but it gives me something to do with my free time."

"Yes, Hermione did tell me about that. You have a NASROP pass and everything." Her eyes sparkled a bit.

Draco quirked his head to the side. She was friends with Granger, and they talk about him? "Yes. Maybe we can go there if you'd like - "

"I'd like that _very_ much, oh _would I_... what an honor... what was the prophecy about?"

Draco was silent for a second as Asteria looked at him. She shook her head again. "You'd have to kill me," she said, waving her hand lightly. He nodded, smiling.

"At this point, it doesn't matter who knows. The research is getting very in depth now, because of the subject matter - the prophecy actually refers to a future child of someone I know, and how that child and another we don't know the identity of will 'be privy to the voice of a god.' It had the Minister in knots."

"Well, I can see how that could be big. It could mean something having to do with the Bible."

Draco nodded. "But of course, there is the fact that the girl who made the prophecy is now in a coma, in a muggle sanatorium... we believe she is a squib, but she has no last name. They call her Eva."

"Fascinating. How did they obtain it?"

"The prophecy?"

"Yes."

"The Ministry was keeping an eye on her because she seemed to have no magic but had knowledge of the magical world, as in, an in-depth knowledge. That was why she landed there in the first place. The muggles said she was going on about 'parasol tongues' for a while."

Asteria smiled. "She probably _is_ a squib."

Draco nodded. "But anyway, my research has dug up a whole new branch of magic I never knew existed. So it is a great learning experience."

"I'll bet," she said, looking down at her plate and digging up a bite. Draco looked at her plate - she had not ordered a salad. Au contrair.

"Hermione's pregnant, you know," Asteria said.

Draco nodded, covering his sudden frown with his water glass. He did not want to contemplate that, or what that meant or involved... he just wanted to make it through the day without throwing up.

"Apparently she's a month along already and didn't know it."

Draco's eyeballs bulged as some water went down the wrong pipe. He covered this quickly with a cough and looked down at what water had dripped in his lap.

"You... don't seem happy to hear that bit."

Draco shook his head, clearing his throat. "I don't know what to think about it, really. I guess it's just different. Not bad, exactly... just too different."

Asteria nodded, chewing. She stabbed some more food slowly. "Continuity is what keeps some people sane - they cannot handle disorder. Personally, disorder is what keeps me moving."

Draco raised his eyebrows. _She's really going to like me then. There's plenty of disorder in my life._

* * *

Hermione pulled the blanket from on top of her, feeling her heart speed up.

Everything seemed so wonderful when you saw the result... but she knew that getting there wasn't easy.

Why did she feel so weak all the time now? She covered her face with her hands, feeling them slide across the light sheen on her forehead. Her whole body was in pain, and yet she could not understand why. It was not a muscle pain - it was a pain that came from the inside out, like emotional pain. She wanted to cry but couldn't push out any tears.

It was making her frustrated. And exhausted.

Where were her iron pills? She needed to be taking those. Sitting up slowly, Hermione's head began beating like her heart. The still form of Ron, fast asleep next to her and for once _not_snoring, did not move as she lifted herself off the bed quickly to get over her laziness and achiness.

Her head swam suddenly, muddling her brain and blurring her vision to white, and then black. She hit the ground hard.

* * *

"Have you made a move towards a date with anyone? Did you ask Asteria out like I told you to?"

Draco looked at the ceiling breifly, and then back at Hermione. "Yes, actually."

There was actually a pause after this, where neither of them moved. Draco studied her expression - her face was blank.

"Last night I went out with her. She's actually a very nice girl, and very intelligent."

Hermione nodded, still not responding, and returned to writing on her parchment almost apologetically.

"She has a quiet voice... but she is very articulate. I like a girl like that. I was thinking of taking her to the NASROP because she wanted to take a look."

"That's great," Hermione said not looking at him and continuing writing on her pad. Draco stared at her, watching her quill make its little movements across the page. The scratchings sounded oddly loud in his ears. The glowing he had noticed the other day was gone - she now looked almost half dead.

"Are... are you okay?"

Hermione looked up from her parchment sharply. There was a few seconds of silence while she stared at him, before looking back down at her parchment and throwing an unconvincing smile on her face. "Of course I'm okay. So what did you talk about on your date?"

Draco narrowed his eyes a bit before saying, "Not much. We talked about the prophecy a bit, and about the NASROP. She told me a little bit about what she is studying in school. That was about it."

Hermione nodded again. "Did you talk about what you found about soulmates?"

Draco was quiet. What would it matter if he had? And why would he tell a girl he was on a date with that he was soulmates with someone else? Certainly that would be an instant mood killer. "No," he said simply. Her brain must not have turned on that morning.

"I found something else. Trust me, I did not like being seen in that section of Flourish and Blotts... but it had to be done."

Draco did not know what to make of this. "What did you find?"

Her eyes never left her paper. "Nothing much more, but in better detail. There are entire books written about the subject - research books and... others." She scratched something out and then continued. "I had to sift through the crap to get to the good stuff."

There was something seriously wrong with her, Draco realized. Her normal manner was completely absent - she was now reminding him very strongly of Pansy and her outfit. All emotion and no intellectual brain activity to sort through it was how he characterized his former girlfriend, and though he would always love the girl, there was in actuality only so much he could take of her. Hermione's ability to be articulate had disappeared, as well as her carefully placed face... Pansy was never good at either of those things.

Draco found himself involuntarily wrinkling his nose.

It made him feel awful.

"And um... I made some notes for you. Completely unnecessary, I know... but still necessary in a way. You can look over them when you have some time." She reached around her desk and pulled out some bits of parchment from her bag.

Draco stared as she closed her eyes for a few seconds before she handed them to him. He took the parchments quietly.

"I really don't have anything to talk to you about today. You are doing very well with the healing process, I think. That's good. The Ministry is sending an official down to oversee your progress next week, so he'll be sitting in with us - I just got the owl this morning. Also, they will be searching your flat as well and asking you some questions."

"Why?" he asked, surprised by this information.

Hermione looked up at him and said, "It's your midpoint."

Oh, the wonderful "midpoint" that was described to him at his release - where he was reminded of his charges and had to live in fear for an entire week while the Ministry picked its way through his life.

At least everything was uphill from there.

"Don't worry, it'll be over before you know it."

There was something in her expression, though, that convinced him that nothing was ever going to end.

"Besides, time moves quickly after the midpoint. You'll be out of here, you'll have your old life back. No stress."

No stress... it sounded wonderful when she put it that way, but there would never be such a thing as "no stress." He was starting to understand that. And what would he do with everything once he did get it back? He hadn't even begun to think about that. His wand, his money, his house, his freedom... no invisible chains, no mistreatment. The sideways looks would never go away... but he'd be less inclined to notice them or let them affect them with the warmth of a wand pressing against his chest, ready to be used for whatever he might need...

It all, however, came back to one question:

What did he really _want?_

He did not want to feel that people like Ernie MacMillan and Neville Longbottom were going to hex him when they saw him on the street, and yet the feeling of apathy for that situation was brought upon by the absence of the wand as well... his house was like a book he had never read, a book he had only heard about and had never cracked open; his little plain flat was warm, bare, and bright. Like sunlight, his new life was the complete opposite of his stay at Azkaban and everything that had contributed to it.

His old life felt like a colorless midnight... this new life felt like afternoon.

Draco shook his head. "Why would I want to go back?"


	20. Weakness

**Chapter Twenty: Weakness**

Draco didn't like to think that he was a weak person. But then again, there were a _lot_ of things that he didn't like to think about himself.

_Discrimination comes from the weakness of people's hearts. You cannot judge someone by things they cannot change, like race, family, or birth. That is weakness._

_Weakness is also the inability to forgive someone for their discrimination, and reverse discrimination based on the stereotype you, yourself, create. That is also weakness. Not everyone is strong and can stand up to it, but recognizing the weakness is the first step to overcoming it and beginning to forgive._

Hermione's notes were very heavy and very sobering. It turned out that the notes were not just notes about soulmates, which Draco had read through already.

_Dying is not punishment for crimes. Living with the knowledge of that crime and working to atone for it is the punishment, a punishment that allows for learning, experience, and eventual self-liking._

_Not being forgiven for a crime is the worst punishment there is; it is hard to forget those who suffer for things you have done. You can work to make up for this, but you must also know that there is no such thing as justification. Punishment for crimes never goes away. Let that be a deterrent._

Draco shook his head and put the bits of parchment into his bag. Tomorrow, a Ministry official was going to be sitting in the room with him and Granger, watching them and evaluating his progress. He realized that he should be nervous, but instead, he felt calm about the situation.

Of course that official would evaluate him, but who was there to evaluate? A person who had changed quite a bit since the downfall of the Death Eaters, or so Granger had told him. It made him feel a little confident.

* * *

"I think that baby of yours is draining your life force."

Hermione turned to Ron sternly. "What do you mean _that baby of yours?_ She's yours too."

"_He_ has been disowned for making you suffer. Little parasite!"

Hermione didn't like that at all. She hit Ron across his shoulder.

"Are you two done yet?" Draco commented. "We have stuff to do."

Hermione shook her head and shouldered her bag. No one could even tell she was pregnant (based on her stomach) but it seemed that her condition was already taking its toll. Another month and she'd have a slight bulge to lug around; her mood would definitely not improve then.

Their wedding was only two weeks away now, and they had been nice enough to offer to help Draco with his apartment before the Ministry came in and thought he was a serial killer.

"I need food, furnishings, and... a dresser. That's about it."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I saw the inside of that place. It looks faintly like one of the dingier cells in Azkaban. Therefore, _I'll_ be the judge of what you need. You boys can stand back and watch."

Ron was content to let Hermione do all the work, 'parasite' or no. He didn't volunteer for this outing; he thought that the words 'Saturday' and 'housework' should never be used together.

Of course they ended up finishing before Ron could start complaining; Draco had built up a bank stack from his minimal luxuries and the decreased living expense. He didn't have a bank account, at least not a new one (he still couldn't lay a finger on his old one,) so all of his money was stacked up in the bottom of his closet in gold, silver, and bronze. He'd apparently gotten bored enough to organize the stacks into shining pyramids below his work clothes, which were hanging on wire hangers.

"Ew," Hermione had said when she'd seen them.

"You don't like my money mountains?"

"I like your... 'money mountains.' I was talking about your hangers."

The kitchen was another story; Hermione had done the one thing he hoped that she wouldn't do:

Pull the stove away from the wall.

"Ugh!" she said, surveying the damage. "Do you ever clean behind here?"

Draco was faintly reminded of the first time she had come to his flat, when she was tiring him out by everything she did. He had never been more embarrassed in his life, he suspected, than by some of the things she did in his pitiful little apartment.

Once there was some furniture and some pictures on the walls, he and Ron went to the Farmer's Market on the newer side of Diagon Alley to pick up some food. Hermione had given them a list, but Ron chucked that the first chance he got.

"I know quite a bit about food," he said. "Hermione barely eats, I eat an actual metric ton as a light snack." Draco nodded admittedly and let himself be led from stall to stall.

When they arrived back at Draco's flat, Hermione was using her wand to test paint colors for the walls. The furniture they'd gotten was off-white, which Hermione had done on purpose to allow for a bold wall color.

"Color adds energy to a room; I suppose the grey, stone walls look a bit too similar to your cell to be comfortable."

Draco had shaken his head - he didn't mind the walls so much. They had just been painfully ugly.

A rug now covered his hardwood floor, a moving image of a chimera in its fibers. His bed was moved to his room; Hermione had not been happy that he lived in his main room, leaving his bedroom nearly untouched. Draco looked up. She was switching between a dark blue and green. "I like the blue," he commented lightly. The green was a bit to Slytherinny for the walls of this room.

She smiled. The glow she'd had the previous week had returned. "I think so too. Blue induces peace and contemplation, something that would do you good."

His bedroom had tan walls now, with cherry furniture and a burgundy duvet on the bed. He had no pillows still.

Nodding in approval but secretly not caring what color his little room was, he went into the bathroom.

The walls were now spring green and cream. He raised his eyebrows - he wasn't used to any room being this bright and cheery - and examined the flowers Hermione had put in the corner of his vanity. Was the woman insane?

"There are _flowers_ in my bathroom!" he said as he entered the kitchen. She was shutting the door to his food storage closet. "Never send a woman to do a man's -"

"Shut up before I hit you with these bananas," she said, a bunch of bananas in one hand, a large basket in the other.

"Do it then!"

Hermione reached and struck out, clapping him of the side of the face. Draco laughed. "I can't believe you actually did that."

"Next I'll throw this orange at you."

He backed out of range, letting her set up a fruit basket on his counter, then wash her hands in the sink. He found himself staring - Granger looked like such a housewife in his little kitchen, her hands soapy, bits of curly hair dangling in her face.

He shook the image away as he realized that she was speaking to him. "What was that?"

"Are you ready for the session tomorrow?"

"I think so."

"It's no big deal," she promised, drying her hands on her jeans. "Just like any other day. The officials tend to be... annoying. On purpose, I think. Don't lose your temper. I won't be to hard on you, just in case he decides to get snippy to test your boundaries. It'll be over before you know it. I hope you aren't nervous -"

"Oi, woman, I wasn't before you went off like that!"

Hermione smiled. "They just like to appear like they don't believe you. They almost never extend someones time; at least not _my_ patients."

* * *

"Why do you think that people seek power?"

It was the next day, with Draco, physically and metaphorically, on the couch. "Power is addicting. It is a way to look down on others and say, 'look at me. I'm great and powerful.'"

He could hear the scratching of the Ministry official's quill next to him. He wondered if the guy purposely seated himself on the couch next to Draco in order to remind him that he was being evaluated.

Prick.

"You would think that at least some people would want to do something good with it. That is why I don't understand politicians; how can they _all_ be so self centered and greedy? Someone has to step up who means what they say. But no honest person gets anywhere close to powerful with all of the dishonesty. Case and point, Fudge."

"Case and point, me."

Hermione cocked her head at him briefly before writing something down: _Was he all that powerful?_

"What other reasons are there?"

Draco shrugged at looked up at the ceiling. The Ministry official followed his gaze. "I suppose people want it in order to make a difference, whether good or bad. Something I learned at home was economics - 'there is no such thing as a free lunch.' You have to pay for every little transaction you make, whether you think it is benefiting everyone or not. That even comes with doing good deeds."

"No good deed goes unpunished."

"Something like that."

Hermione nodded, for once not taking up her quill. Draco could tell that she had gears turning.

"Aleksei, what do you think?"

The Ministry official looked up at her, obviously a little taken aback at being addressed, and so informally considering the situation. "Well... I think all power corrupts in some way."

Hermione nodded and wrote a title: _Why does power have to corrupt?_ She underlined it.

"Why does power have to corrupt? What do you think, Draco?"

He fidgeted. "Well, it doesn't have to corrupt. Everyone has some power, whether they realize it or not. For example, you have some power over your patients, no matter their social rank or job status. That is power. I don't think it has corrupted you."

Hermione smiled lightly as she paraphrased his response on her parchment.

"The wrong type of power almost always corrupts," Aleksei put forth.

"And what type would that be?"

"The power to have anything you want."

Hermione nodded. "That's an interesting point. It is weakness to give in to selfish desires. Perhaps all one's power just covers up that they are weak. Perhaps not intellectually, in the case of the Dark Lord... but in the end, on that night, I think we all saw his weakness - he let his thirst for power blind him so much that he forgot logic."

"And he died by a technicality, a fitting end for such a powerful wizard."

Draco rolled his eyes. He'd personally wanted Potter to explode the other man, just to make sure he was dead.

"You disagree, Draco?"

"I wanted The Dark Lord to be tortured and maimed, so that he might understand, in the end, how terrible he really was."

"To him it wasn't so terrible; everything he did was a means to an end. Dumbledore was the terrible one, and Harry Potter was the terrible one. To him they were like little worms trying to dismantle his 'great' plans."

"Aye, that's true. He needen't have died without empathy though. I feel that was more necessary for... closure."

"For revenge," Aleksei said. "You wanted revenge on He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

Here is was now - the guy was trying to piss him off on purpose. "Who wouldn't? If one were to have the opportunity, I doubt one wouldn't take it."

Hermione's resulting stare was of approval. He was getting a lot of those looks from her nowadays; it was gratifying.

"I understand you have some questions for Mr. Malfoy, Aleksei. Do proceed." The man stared at her. Draco's therapy session wasn't over for another hour and a half.

"Well, yes I do, of course."

Aleksei turned to Draco.

Hermione kept quiet during Draco's questioning; instead of hearing his responses, she watched the various emotions cross his face. He was very easy for her to read now - she understood what he was thinking when he raised one eyebrow or jutted out his jaw. He wasn't lying, which was good. She had been a little worried that he would be too nervous to tell the complete truth - he should know better anyway. Aleksei could also tell when people lied, whether he prodded it out of them on purpose or not.

Draco was resilient, it seemed. Outwardly anyway.

"One last thing. I see that you travel to the NASROP almost every day."

"Yes sir."

"What is it that you do there?"

Draco looked at the other man. "I read and research things. It helps me pass the time."

"And you enjoy researching?"

Draco bit down a scowl. "Obviously."

Aleksei finished writing and stared intently at Draco for a few seconds. Draco's nose began to itch. "We will be conducting a search of your domicile tomorrow, while you are at work. Someone might be down there in the Department of Mysteries to ask a few questions, maybe not. It might happen sometime on Wednesday, maybe Thursday."

_Well, thanks for making everything so organized._

Draco was a little disappointed that he wouldn't be there to watch them search his flat. He wanted to make sure they didn't take anything the wrong way - like his lack of pillows. Who knew what they'd make of that.

After Aleksei left, Hermione smiled at him.

"You are smiling a lot."

She shrugged. "I'm feeling better, it seems. Besides, it pays to have everything stressful done in advance. It keeps you from going insane."

"That's likely," Draco mumbled.

* * *

_Author's note_: Sorry about that huge delay - I didn't die. If you've been keeping up with the author's notes on my profile page, you'll know that my computer crashed sometime in October, and I lost a lot of Therapy excerpts. Also, I've been busy with college applications. This won't happen again, I promise. In the meantime, check out my newer Dramione story. I tend to update that one more.


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